



































CENTRAL CIRCULATION BOOKSTACKS 


The person charging this material is re- 
sponsible for its return to the library from 
which it was borrowed on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. 

Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons 
for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from 
the University. 

TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 333-8400 


| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


| 
gpa 8 


mrt i 9 \9 2 
NOV 16 1997 


NOV 25 1997 


When renewing by phone, write new due date below 
previous due date. 79521 L162 





fre > Fi 
. } 7 — 
oon ¢ ‘ 
* so o* } 
Lhd ° 4 
a) » 
Me 2 af 7 ha) ‘. 
a 5) , 4 i 
en 7 al P - ’ U 
a “ 
+ “ « 
ae 7 s\? % 
. 
a» ee, 7 
a. os s 
- en ae . 
a ae i fi 
oe 
BP RS 
ie 2 Opty v. 
. 
f 
FN 
+ 
} 
' 
~ 
- 
‘ 
' } ‘ 
i 





LIBRARY 
ih, RBORBIHER y 
_ UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


* 
»* 
nd 2 
~~? is 
we 
a Wee 
d ¥ 
=) 


af 





WADE HAMPTON, 1889 


“The diffusion of the Negroes? It would deprive us of much of our labor 
and make it a little harder for the present generation, but it would be 
the salvation of the future.” 


THE 
SLAVE TRADE 


Slavery an d Color 


BY 
THEODORE D. JERVEY 


COLUMBIA, S. C, 
THE STATE COMPANY 
1925 









7 


J 


4 + 
\ { ( , 
: P 
r - t + ‘ ' * 41th i 
a. 
i 
Orr me = ‘¥ ) 
2 7 . ’ i f 
9 x 6 * 
' f Hy oi 
5 t ; rh 
~ ayes op t ey 
' x s ty 
( ; Fd 2 
. 4 us ! 
‘ J A - ‘ a 
i> j , 
‘ + i ' 
a o 
1 HY, 
* { 
a 
g ’ 
. } £ ! > 
* 4 ; 
+ , a | 
rn 4 Nye le ; ‘ 
- \ 5 ' 
l 
te ; . : 
‘ 
7 ' 
sd 
é 
‘ ; 
~ ft 
. : ‘ oh 
\ 
, ook 
' P hy } 
: / A : (ie te LAD | 
+48 ? _ COPYRIGHT 1925 
* > ’ , ‘ ! : ea ane 
Ae , ( 4 } \ i i | 
EN he THE STATE COMPANY 
( al pani " 
+ , ¥ , Tas 
- : ‘ F : 
, ‘ , 
‘ 
\ 
+ : -“ 
+ / 
‘ J 
* 
\ 
‘ 
; 
\ ; / 
i 
7 j vi 
, ‘ 
| 4 ’ A 
i | 
“ . 
i ft } 
“a 
i = 
: 4 
; ‘ 
; 
re > 
: rH 
" 
- Le 
+ 
4 y afr r vee = 
y Pe | ii 1 
‘ * } 
o/ ? 
\ 
j 
: 
i “" 
ah a peme a j 
j 
‘ i ? ne 4 : C > 
q 7 hee ( oa | 
é av 7) 
, 


"4s <jpealal? 


Petal cays: ‘- 
Wty # ye 4 a 

‘ hier ae ‘ 
Wi ae ae i 
ade oan Ge if 












1 


Oe Se ee 


TO 
A. 8S. SALLEY, JR. 


Secretary of the Historical Commission 
of South Carolina 


whose friendship has stood the test of 
time and whose exact knowledge, those 
standing high among the scholars of 


American history have recognized, this 
book is dedicated. 


995669 





Sak i ae 
W ij WVUE Wi ‘ 


Ane 





INTRODUCTORY 


The following pages, from which an excerpt was 
published in 1918, under the title—The Railroad 
The Conqueror—constitute an attempt to put with- 
in short compass the main causes of the shifting 
sectionalism of the people of the United States. 

The facts and assertions upon which this sketch 
is based have, with others not included, been gath- 
ered and pondered for at least sixteen years, during 
which period, much at times interwoven, has, from 
time to time been cut, for fear that consideration 
of such might lead the thoughts of the possible 
reader away from the main theme. 

As to the workmanship few can see more clearly 
than the author, how much better that could have 
been, had he who undertook it been accommodated 
with more leisure and equipped with scholarship 
and means. Yet it is doubtful if any one could 
have approached the task and pursued it through 
the years which have intervened between its in- 
ception and completion with a firmer determination 
to present the truth and nothing but the truth, as 
the writer saw and still sees it. 

To publish what is herein set out, in this day of 
rampant commercialism and often unconscious in- 
tolerance, requires character and courage in a pub- 
lisher. 

On the other hand, submission to some, holding 
themselves out as publishers and soliciting manu- 
scripts, involves occasional risk, and in this con- 
nection, the author feels that he would be lacking 
in ordinary gratitude, did he not record the rescue 

V 


INTRODUCTORY 


of this manuscript, in an earlier form, from the 
clutch of a publishing house, which having obtained 
it on solicitation, for perusal and consideration, on 
terms declined, held it for a year, in spite of re- 
peated requests for its return, replied to repeatedly, 
with untruthful assertions that it had been sent 
back. Without any knowledge of or interest in the 
contents, a stranger, to whose inquiries concerning 
local history, the author, from time to time had re- 
plied, C. W. Lewis, Esq., residing in the vicinity of 
the disreputable publishing house, upon request, by 
a personal call, forced the delivery of the manu- 
script and returned it to the author. Now complete 
it is‘submitted to the public without further com- 
ment to speak for itself. 


vi 


THE SLAVE TRADE 
Slavery and Color 
CHAPTER I 


In consideration of much that appears in the 
numerous contributions to the discussion of the 
Negro Question, it must be noticeable that in recent 
‘years, there has been quite a broadening of the field, 
and that, from what was in the past, mainly a ques- 
tion of slavery or freedom, for one particular class 
of people, in one great country, we have advanced to 
a consideration of what may effect the entire world 
in that, which has been entitled by some: ‘““The Con- 
flict of Color,” and by others not quite so pessimis- 
tic: “The Question of the Twentieth Century, the 
Question of Color.” 

In such circumstances, an examination of the 
evolution of this question and a recital of some of 
the phases under which it has been brought up for 
discussion in the history of the United States, may 
tend to correct some misapprehensions and throw 
some additional light upon a subject, which, in 
spite of the efforts to suppress it, is continually forc- 
ing itself upon the attention of the world. 

While freely admitting the impossibility of dis- 
cussing this subject, within any reasonable limits, 
without necessarily omitting mention of many pub- 
lications, containing an amount of extremely valu- 
able information, the aim of this work will be to 
trace the evolution of the question as it has ap- 
peared, in the expression of both whites and Negroes, 
in that country in which public opinion is said 


1 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


to exercise the greatest influence upon government. 
In undertaking such an examination it would be 
hardly necessary to make any very close scrutiny of 
the Colonial period, from the fact that while there 
was opinion that found expression in acts, state- 
ments and laws, the colonies, being under the control 
of Great Britain, were subjected to her policies and 
representative of her civilization. The extraordi- 
nary case therefore of a Massachusetts slave-owner, 
Maverick, who simply for breeding purposes, in 
1636, forced an African woman of high rank, owned 
by him, to accept the embraces of a common young 
Negro’ was but a way of expressing contempt for the 
race. The Maryland Act of 1663, a far less coarse 
expression, involved all white women who failed to 
entertain it. In Stroud’s “Sketch of the laws of 
Slavery,” published in 1827, we find on page 2: 


“Section 2. And forasmuch as divers free born English 
women forgetful of their free condition, and to the disgrace 
of our nation do intermarry with Negro slaves” such “free 
born women... shall serve the master of such slave dur- 
ing the life of her husband and all the issue of such free 
born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers 
were.” 


Yet despite these two striking illustrations at these 
early dates, broadly speaking, we might claim that 
in British America ‘“‘up to 1700 and perhaps beyond, 
the sentiment North and South concerning the Ne- 
gro or his enslavement differed but slightly; for 
while the South Carolina Act of 1690 did provide 
severe regulations for Negro and Indian slaves, a 
VPxPMiipetamertcan Negro Slavery, p. 361. 
2 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


study of the statutes from 1698’? “and later of the 
press, indicates a sentiment against the importation 
of Negroes, which however was forced upon that 
province, as upon others, by the British Govern- 
ment.” 

The Revolutionary war, which shook off this con- 
trolling force, associated the States together, under 
the Articles of Confederation, thus paving the way 
for that great experiment, the Constitutional Fed- 
eral Republic, which succeeded it. 

It was in the deliberations of the great Conven- 
tion, which framed that “‘more perfect union”’, that 
the Negro question really first arose, as a matter 
of vital political concern; nor among all the ques- 
tions which confronted that extraordinary body, did 
there appear a graver one, than that affecting the 
status of the colored people of the Union. 

This class represented, at that time, about one- 
fifth of the population of the thirteen States, which 
it was the aim to unite, or 737,208 blacks as against 
3,172,006 whites‘, and while of these 737,208 colored 
persons some 59,527 were free, in every one of the 
thirteen States, except Massachusetts, there were 
slaves, and in only one State, outside of New Eng- 
land, Pennsylvania, were free persons of color more 
numerous than slaves. 

In eight of the thirteen States the Negro slaves 
greatly outnumbered the free persons of color; while 
in still another, with a total of 5,572 colored persons, 
the colored freedmen exceeded the slaves by only 54. 

2Statutes of S. C., Vols. 2 & 7, pp. 153, 367, 370. 
een x esau: Feb. 26, 1732, McCrady, 8. C. under the Royal Coveent 

‘Compendium of the Ninth Census of the United States, p. 13. 

3 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Under these conditions, it was not unnatural that 
the question should have presented itself as one of 
slavery versus freedom, rather than Negroes versus 
whites, and for the seventy years in which slavery 
continued to exist, that fact served to obscure, to 
quite an extent, the appreciation of the distinct 
question of color and race. Yet by some, at an ex- 
ceedingly early date, it was recognized, that apart 
from the consideration of how they might be held, 
the mere presence in the Republic of a large and 
growing number of people of an inferio” race, pre- 
sented a serious problem. ht 

When the consideration of the basis upon which 
Federal representation should rest, and‘direct taxes 
be apportioned, was reached, the framers of the Con- 
stitution found themselves, therefore, confronted 
with a political question of the first magnitude, in 
the existence of the slave trade. 

What was the slave? A man or a chattel? 

The question was precipitated by a clause in 
the report of the committee of detail, presented by 
John Rutledge, of South Carolina, ‘Article 7, Sec- 
tion 4. ““No tax or duty shall be laid by the Legisla- 
ture on articles exported from any State nor on the 
migration or importation of such persons as the 
several States shall think proper to admit, nor shall 
such migration or importation be prohibited.’”® 

In the light of what followed, of the existing leg- 
islation upon that subject in the State of South 
Carolina, and the history of the province and State, 
the introduction of the concluding clause of this 
ey ee eh of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, p. 188. 

4 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


section by her most distinguished representative was 
unfortunate. It gave rise to declarations concern- 
ing the State which not only do not seem to have 
been absolutely borne out by the facts; but which 
the actions and votes of her deputies themselves, to 
some extent stultified; yet the State was neverthe- 
less stamped with an unenviable precedence in a 
matter in which she cast but one of the seven votes, 
in a total of eleven, by which the final decision was 
arrived at. 

In the discussion which immediately arose upon 
the introduction of the report, four views with re- 
gard to this clause found expression. 

Luther Martin, of Maryland, a Representative 
from a State, which, as will subsequently be shown, 
could have then been described as the most complete 
slave State of the thirteen, had nevertheless the 
discernment to realize the dangers of such a condi- 
tion, and proposed to alter the section, so as to allow 
a prohibition or tax on the importation of slaves. 
He presented three grounds of objection to the 
denial of such: ‘‘1. As five slaves are to be counted 
as three free-men in the apportionment of Rep- 
resentatives, such a clause would leave an encourage- 
ment of the traffic. 2. Slaves weakened one part of 
the Union, which the other parts were bound to pro- 
tect; the privilege of importing them was, therefore, 
unreasonable. 3. It was inconsistent with the prin- 
ciples of the Revolution and dishonorable to the 


American character to have such features in the 
Constitution.” 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


In defending the clause Mr. Rutledge was not con- - 


ciliatory. He “did not see how the importation of 
slaves could be encouraged by this section. He was 
not apprehensive of insurrections and would readily 
exempt the other States from their obligations to 
protect the Southern States against them. Religion 
and humanity had nothing to do with the question. 
Interest alone is the governing principle with 
nations. The true question at present is whether 
the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to 
the Union. If the Northern States consult their 
interest they will not oppose the increase of slaves 
which will increase the commodities of which they 
will become the consumers.” 


Mr. Ellsworth of Connecticut supported the clause 
in an argument pitched upon the same utilitarian 
plane, but strengthened with what was an assertion 
of the doctrine of States rights. He “was for leav- 
ing the clause as it stands. Let every State import 
what it pleases. The morality or wisdom of slavery 
are considerations belonging to the States them- 
selves. What enriches a part enriches the whole, 
and the States are the best judges of their particular 
interests. The old Confederation had not meddled 
with this point and he did not see any greater neces- 
sity for bringing it within the policy of the new 
one.” 

Mr. Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, while 
upholding the view of Mr. Rutledge, held out a hope 
of subsequent accord. He said “South Carolina 
can never receive the plan, if it prohibits the slave 
trade. In every proposed extension of the powers 


6 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of Congress, that State has expressly and watchfully 
excepted that of meddling with the importation of 
Negroes. If the States be all left at liberty on the 
subject, South Carolina may perhaps by degrees do 
ot herself what is wished, as Virginia and Maryland 
have already done.’’® 

Upon the following day the discussion was re- 
sumed. 

Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, “was for leaving 
the clause as it stands. He disapproved of the 
slave trade; yet as the States were now possessed 
of the right to import slaves, as the public good 
did not require it to be taken from them and as it 
was expedient to have as few objections as possible 
to the proposed scheme of Government, thought it 
best to leave the matter as we found it. He ob- 
served that the abolition of slavery seemed to be 
going on in the United States, and that the good 
sense of the several States would probably by de- 
grees complete it. He urged upon the Convention 
the necessity of dispatching its business.” 


Col. Mason, of Virginia, took very high ground. 
He declared: ‘‘This infernal traffic originated in the 
avarice of the British merchants. The British Gov- 
ernment constantly checked the attempts of Vir- 
ginia to put a stop to it. The present question con- 
cerns not the importing States alone, but the whole 
Union. The evil of having slaves was experienced 
during the late war. Had slaves been treated as 
they might have been by the enemy, they would have 
proved dangerous instruments in their hands. But 
Farrand) Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, p. 364. 


7 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


their folly dealt by the slaves as it did by the Tories. 
He mentioned the dangerous insurrections of the 
slaves in Greece and Sicily, and the instructions 
given by Cromwell to the commissioners sent to 
Virginia to arm the servants and slaves in case 
other means of obtaining submission should fail. 
Maryland and Virginia, he said, had already pro- 
hibited the importation of slaves expressly. North 
Carolina had done the same in substance. All this 
would be vain, if South Carolina and Georgia be 
at liberty to import. The Western people are al- 
ready calling out for slaves in their new lands, and 
will fill that country with slaves, if they can be got 
through South Carolina and Georgia. Slavery dis- 
courages arts and manufactures. The poor despise 
labor when performed by slaves. They prevent 
the immigration of whites, who really enrich and 
strengthen a country.’ They produce the most per- 
nicious effect on morals. Every master of slaves 
is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of 
Heaven on a country. As nations cannot be re- 
warded or punished in the next world they must_be 
in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects 
Providence punishes national sins by national cala- 
mities. He lamented that some of our Hastern 
brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this 
nefarious traffic. As to the States being in posses- 
sion of the right to import, this was the case with 
many other rights now to be properly given up. 
He held it essential in every point of view that the 
General Government should have power to prevent 
the increase of slavery.” 


THH SLAVE TRADE 


Mr. Ellsworth spoke again, and quite to the point: 
“As he had never owned a slave, could not judge 
of the effect of slavery on character. He said, 
however, that if it was to be considered in a moral 
light, we ought to go further and free those already 
in the country. As slaves also multiply so fast in 
Virginia and Maryland that it is cheaper to raise 
than import them, whilst in the sickly swamps for- 
eign supplies are necessary. If we go no further 
than is urged we shall be unjust to South Carolina 
and Georgia. Let us not intermeddle. As popu- 
lation increases, poor laborers will be so plenty as 
to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not 
be a speck in our country. Provision is already 
made in Connecticut for abolishing it. And the 
abolition has already taken place in Massachusetts. 
As to the danger of insurrection from foreign in- 
fluence that will become a motive to kind treatment 
of the slaves.” 

Mr. Charles Pinckney said: “If slavery be wrong 
it is justified by the example of all the world. He 
cited the case of Greece, Rome and other States; 
the sanction given by France, England, Holland and 
other modern States. In all ages one half of man- 
kind have been slaves. If the Southern States were 
left alone they will probably of themselves stop 
importation. He would himself, as a citizen of 
South Carolina, vote for it. An attempt to take 
away the right, as proposed, will produce serious 
objections to the Constitution which he wished to 
see adopted.” 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Gen. C. C. Pinckney “declared it to be his firm 
opinion that if himself and all his colleagues were 
to sign the Constitution and use their personal in- 
fluence it would be of no avail towards obtaining 
the assent of their constitutents. South Carolina 
and Georgia cannot do without slaves. As to Vir- 
ginia, she will gain by stopping the importations. 
Her slaves will rise in value and she has more than 
she wants. It would be unequal to require South 
Carolina and Georgia to confederate on such un- 
equal terms. He said the royal assent before the 
Revolution had never been refused to South Caro- 
lina as to Virginia. He contended that the importa- 
tion of Slaves would be for the interest of the Whole 
Union. The more slaves the more produce to em- 
ploy the carrying trade. The more consumption 
also, and the more of this the more of revenue for 
the common treasury. He admitted it to be reason- 
able that slaves should be dutied like other im- 
ports, but should consider a rejection of the clause 
as an exclusion of South Carolina from the Union.” 

Mr. Baldwin, of Georgia, ‘had conceived national 
objects alone to be before the Convention, not such 
as like the present were of a local nature. Georgia 
was decided on this point. That State has always 
hitherto supposed a General Government to be the 
pursuit of the central States who wished to have a 
vortex for everything—that her distance would pre- 
clude her from equal advantage—and that she could 
not prudently purchase it by yielding national pow- 
ers. From this it might be understood in what light 
she would view an attempt to abridge her favorite 


10 


THE: SLAVE TRADE 


prerogative. If left to herself she may probably 
put a stop to the evil. As one ground for this con- 
jecture he took notice of the sect of which he said 
was a respectable class of people who carried their 
ethics beyond the mere equality of men, extending 
their humanity to the claims of the whole animal 
creation.” 

Mr. Wilson, of Pennsylvania, ‘‘observed that if 
South Carolina and Georgia were themselves dis- 
posed to get rid of the importation of slaves in a 
short time, as had been suggested, they would never 
refuse to unite because the importation might be 
prohibited. As the section now stands all articles 
imported are to be taxed. Slaves alone are exempt. 
This is in fact a bounty on that article.” 


Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, ‘thought we had 
nothing to do with the conduct of the States as to 
slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any sanc- 
tion to it.” 

Mr. Dickinson, of Delaware, ‘‘considered it as 
inadmissible on every principle of honor and safety 
that the importation of slaves should be authorized 
to the States by the Constitution. 'The true ques- 
tion was whether the national happiness would be 
promoted or impeded by the importation, and the 
question ought to be left to the National Govern- 
ment, not to the States particularly interested. If 
England and France permit slavery, slaves are at 
the same time excluded from both these kingdoms. 
Greece and Rome were made unhappy by their 
slaves. He could not believe that the Southern 
States would refuse to confederate on the account 


11 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


apprehended; especially as the power was not likely 
to be immediately exercised by the General Govern- 
ment.” 

Mr. Williamson, of North Carolina, ‘“‘stated the 
law of North Carolina on the subject, to wit, that 
it did not directly prohibit the importation of slaves. 
It imposed a duty of five pounds on each slave im- 
ported from Africa. ‘Ten pounds on each from else- 
where, and fifty pounds on each from a State licens- 
ing manumission. He thought the Southern States 
could not be members of the Union if the clause 
should be rejected, and that it was wrong to force 
anything down not absolutely necessary and which 
any State must disagree to.” 

Mr. King, of Massachusetts, “thought the sub- 
ject should be considered in a political light only. 
If two States will not agree to the Constitution as 
stated on one side, he could affirm with equal be- 
lief on the other that great and equal opposition 
would be experienced from the other States. He re- 
marked on the exemption of slaves from duty, while 
every other import was subjected to it, as an in- 
equality that could not fail to strike the commercial 
sagacity of the Northern and Middle States.” 

Mr. Langdon, of New Hampshire, ‘‘was strenuous 
for giving the power to the General Government. 
He could not with a good conscience leave it with . 
the States who could then go on with the traffic, 
without being restrained by the opinion here given 
that they will themselves cease to import slaves.” 

Gen. Pinckney, “thought himself bound to declare 
candidly that he did not think South Carolina would 


12 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


stop her importation of slaves in any short time, 
but only stop them occasionally as she now does. 
He moved to commit the clause that slaves might 
be made liable to an equal tax with other imports, 
which he thought right, and which would remove 
one difficulty that had been started.” 

Mr. Rutledge remarked: “If the Convention 
thinks that North Carolina, South Carolina and 
Georgia will ever agree to the plan, unless their 
right to import slaves be untouched, the expecta- 
tion is vain. The people of these States will never 
be such fools as to give up so important an inter- 
est. He was strenuous against striking out the 
section and seconded the motion of Gen. Pinckney 
for a commitment.” 

Mr. Gouverneur Morris, of Pennsylvania, “wished 
the whole subject to be committed, including the 
clauses relating to taxes on exports, and on a Navi- 
gation Act. These things may form a bargain 
among the Northern and Southern States.” 

Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, declared, “that he 
would never agree to the power of taxing exports.” 

Mr. Sherman said: “‘It was better to let the South- 
ern States import slaves than to part with them, if 
they made that a sine qua non. He was opposed to 
a tax on slaves imported as making the matter 
worse, because it implied they were property. He 
acknowledged that if the power of prohibiting the 
importation should be given to the General Govern- 
ment that it would be exercised. He thought it 
would be its duty to exercise the power.” 


13 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Mr. Reed, of Delaware, “was for the commitment 
provided the clause concerning taxes on exports 
should also be committed.” 

Mr. Sherman, observed: “that that clause had 
been agreed to and therefore could not be com- 
mitted.” 

Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, “was for committing 
in order that some middle ground, if possible, be 
found. He could never agree to the clause as it 
stands. He would sooner risk the Constitution. 
He dwelt on the dilemma to which the Constitution 
was exposed by agreeing to the clause it would re- 
volt the Quakers, the Methodists and many others 
in the States having no slaves. On the other hand, 
two States might be lost to the Union. Let us then,” 
he said, “try the chance of a commitment.’” 

On the question of committing, the vote was: 
New Hampshire, no; Massachusetts, abstaining from 
voting; Connecticut, aye; New Jersey, aye; Penn- 
sylvania, no; Delaware, no; Maryland, aye; Vir- 
ginia, aye; North Carolina, aye; South Carolina, 
aye; Georgia, aye;® In a total of eleven States at 
Convention seven ayes, three noes, one not voting. 

The clause having been referred to a committee 
consisting of Messrs. Langdon, King, Johnson, Liv- 
ingston, Clymer, Dickinson, L. Martin, Madison, Wil- 
liamson, C. C. Pinckney, and Baldwin, the commit- 
tee reported in favor of the clause, with an amend- 
ment making it read: “The migration or importa- 
tion of such persons as the several States now exist- 


‘Farrand. Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, pp. 369, 374. 
SIbid. p. 3874. 


14 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ing shall think proper to admit, shall not be pro- 
hibited by the Legislature prior to the year 1800, 
but a tax or duty may be imposed on such migration 
or importation at a rate not exceeding the average 
of the duties laid on imports.’ 

Gen. Pinckney moved to strike out the words ‘“‘the 
year 1800 and to insert the words eighteen hundred 
and eight.” 


Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts, seconded the mo- 
tion. This action brought from one, who up to that 
time does not appear to have participated in the dis- 
cussion, Mr. Madison, the declaration that: “twenty 
years will produce all the mischief that can be ap- 
prehended from the liberty to import slaves. So 
long a term will be more dishonorable to the national 
character than to say nothing about it in the Con- 
stitution.’’?° 

The reported clause had been referred to the com- 
mittee against the vote of New Hampshire, Penn- 
sylvania, and Delaware. Virginia and New Jersey 
both opposed the amendment; but as it received the 
vote of both New Hampshire and Massachusetts, 
which had not voted for the commitment, it was 
supported by seven out of the eleven States, the 
three New England States present and four of the 
five Southern States, the three Middle States pres- 


ent, and one Southern State, opposing. 

While reasonable men must always be alive to the 
necessity of compromise, and while also the great 

*Tbid. p. 400. 

Prof. Farrand renders ‘“‘abst’” absent, which the context contradicts. 
King of Massachusetts, was put on the committee. 

10Marrand, Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, p. 415. 


15 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


responsibilities of the situation concerning this mat- 
ter are apparent, yet this most important discussion 
and vote establishes some facts, with regard to the 
constitutional Union, which the honest historian 
cannot disregard. 


First: The migration or importation of Negroes 
was prohibited in spite of the declaration of the 
representatives of the three Southern States, North 
Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, that some 
of the Southern States could not accept the Consti- 
tution if it did. 


Second: A tax upon the importation was imposed 
through the aid of the vote of New England, whose 
representatives had warned the Convention that it 
would be a recognition of slavery to tax importation. 
The claim, therefore made, that South Carolina 
and Georgia forced the recognition of the slave 
trade is not borne out by the facts in the case. 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Mary- 
land, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia 
followed the suggestion of Gouverneur Morris of 
Pennsylvania, and, abandoning the principles for 
which they had contended, “formed a bargain” by 
which the slave trade was surrendered for the recog- 
nition of slavery by the Constitution. 

Upon considering the discussion, although Ells- 
worth’s shrewd criticism crippled, to some extent, 
the lofty flight of Mason of Virginia, yet the speech 
of the latter puts him upon a higher plane of states- 
manship than that occupied by any deputy present. 
On the other hand, no matter how high their repu- 
tations otherwise may have been established, none 


16 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


descended to so low a plane as King, of Massachu- 
setts and Rutledge of South Carolina; while no in- 
dividual exhibited as much ignorance of the exist- 
. ing situation as he, who by the temperance of his 
utterance and the influence of his high personal 
character, most thoroughly mastered it. 

Gen. C. C. Pinckney did not seem to know that 
South Carolina had not been permitted by Great 
Britain to throw off the slave trade, when, as a 
province, she sought to do so,1! or that the sentiment 
of the people of his State, even while he was speak- 
ing, had found expression in an Act which prohib- 
ited the bringing into the State of “any Negro slave 
contrary to the Act to regulate the recovery of 
debts and prohibiting the importation of Negroes’’!” 
and which was sufficiently strong even after the 
above compromise to negative, by a vote of 93 to 40, 
Gillon’s attempt in the South Carolina Legislature 
in 1788, to repeal the law prohibiting importation."* 
No severer criticism of the General’s statesmanship 
on this point was ever promulgated than that, thirty- 
four years later, which his devoted brother, Gen. 
Thomas Pinckney, furnished, in some reflections, 
published by him'* without any thought of how 
positively they ran counter to the dictum of his 
brother—‘“‘South Carolina and Georgia cannot do 
without slaves”—he warned South Carolinians that 
Negro artisans were taking the places of whites. 
"48, O, Gazette, Feb. 19, 1732, Stat. S. C, Vol. 7, pp. 367-370. McOrady, 
8. C. Under the Roval Government, p. 

2Stat. S. C. Vol. 7, p. 430. 


13State Gazette, Jan. 28, 1788. 
4Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times, p. 130. 


17 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


But, turning from this discussion, it is of impor- 
tance to consider just how the Negro population of 
the United States was located at the time of the 
adoption of the Constitution. 

By the census taken in 1790 it was indicated that 
about six-sevenths of the entire colored population 
of the thirteen States constituting the Union, in- 
habited the four States of Maryland, Virginia, North 
Carolina and South Carolina, of which about one- 
half were found in Virginia, the population in the 
order of their numbers being as follows: Virginia 
305,498; Maryland 111,099; South Carolina, 108,- 
895; North Carolina, 105,547. The Negro popula- 
tion of Georgia at that date was but slightly in ex- 
cess of the Negro population of New York, being 
only 29,662 to New York’s 25,978, while in the 
region north of Maryland there were nearly three 
times as many Negroes as in the region south of 
South Carolina. 

Considering the percentage of blacks to whites 
in the different sections, South Carolina had the 
greatest, with a colored population rising as high as 
44 per cent of the total. Virginia came second, with 
a percentage of 41, Georgia was third, with 36; 
Maryland fourth, with 35; North Carolina fifth, 
with 27; Delaware sixth, with 26; New Jersey 
seventh, with 9; New York eighth, with 8; Rhode 
Island ninth, with 7, and Pennsylvania tenth, with 
less than three per cent. 

There is still another standpoint, however, from 
which this population might be considered; that is 
with regard to the area of the State containing the 


18 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


same, and considered in this light, Maryland, with a 
Negro population in excess of that of South Caro- 
lina, and with an area of only one-third, was the 
most distinct Negro State of the Union. Delaware 
came second, and Virginia third. In the two States 
of Maryland and Virginia, with a combined area of 
79,124 square miles, there was considerably more 
than one-half of the colored population of the United 
States, 416,572. In the region to the south, em- 
bracing the three States of North Carolina, South 
Carolina and Georgia, with an area of 143,040 
square miles, there were as yet but 244,104 Negroes, 
or about one-third of the number, considered with 
regard to the area they inhabited, which makes 
very obvious the contention of Ellsworth that the 
abrogation of the slave trade would have operated 
as a distinct commercial benefit to Maryland and 
Virginia, enabling them to supply to the region 
south of them, at enhanced prices, the slaves they 
might raise for market. 

Virginia, Maryland and Delaware then consti- 
tuted at this time the black belt, containing, as they 
did, four-sevenths of the colored population of the 
Union, three-fourths of the remainder being in the 
region below and one-fourth above. 

In the first decade of the Constitution the density 
of this colored population in Virginia and Maryland 
was actually increased; while, at the same time, 
through an extraordinary accession to her white 
population, in spite of great gains to the colored, 
South Carolina’s colored percentage decreased, and 
it is on this account that what happened in the next 


19 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


decade of the Constitution in South Carolina is of 
so much importance. A consideration of these 
events will show, that, in spite of the declaration of 
her great deputies, that “South Carolina could not 
do without slaves,” and that her people ‘“‘would 
never be such fools as to give up so important an 
interest” as “their right to import slaves,” they 
not only proposed to give up the right, but strove 
earnestly to do so, and only after thirty years of un- 
availing effort, accompained by an ever increasing 
investment in that class of property, did the strong 
minority, which had opposed it, acquiesce in Cal- 
houn’s most unwise view, that the blacks furnished 
“the best substratum of population, upon which 
great and flourishing Commonwealths may be most 
easily and safely reared.’ 

Once it was accepted, the march was steadily on 
to disaster. 


%%Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 369. 


20 


CHAPTER II 


Following Gillon’s unsuccessful attempt in 1788, 
to repeal the existing law, the State of South Caro- 
lina, by successive enactments, in spite of the im- 
plied sanction of the Constitution until 1808, pro- 
hibited the importation of slaves'® up to the year 
1803. In that year Governor James B. Richardson, 
in his annual message to the General Assembly, in- 
directly suggested the repeal of such legislation. 

The language of this message is so involved that, 
considered without reference to its effect, it seems 
to indicate some sympathy with the prohibition of 
the importation; but carefully considered, the secret 
sympathy of this official with those he condemns is 
obvious. The promptness with which it was seized 
upon by the opponents of prohibition, and the argu- 
ments culled from it, indicate that it was the open- 
ing wedge by which the defence against the black 
flood, was split, to admit it in such volume, as to 
make subsequent efforts to stop the flow almost 
useless. 

That portion of the message which dealt with the 
importation of Negro slaves reads as follows: 

“All possible diligence and my best efforts have 
been used to carry effectually into operation the law 
prohibiting the importation of Negroes into the 
State, but it is with concern that I have here to 
state to you, that it has been without success; 
whether it must be attributed principally to the ill 
consequences that are apprehended would result 
~ a6Stat. S. 0. Vol. 7 pp. 431-448. 

21 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


from carrying the law into operation by emancipat- 
ing the Negroes so brought in (a remedy deemed 
more mischievous than the evil of their introduc- 
tion in servitude) or whether the interests of the 
citizens is so interwoven with that species of prop- 
erty, that it prevents their aiding the law in answer- 
ing the salutary purposes, I will not presume to 
determine; but I am inclined to believe both causes 
operate as preventatives; for those people are con- 
tinued to be brought into the State beyond the pos- 
sibility of prevention. In all laws intended for the 
general benefit, they should be so calculated that 
their operation should be found equal in every part 
of the State; where this is not the case it means that 
there is some radical defect therein, or it is inimical 
to the interest of the citizens; with this law such is 
the situation; for in the present state of things, the 
citizens in the frontier and sea coast districts do ac- 
cumulate this property without the possibility of 
being detected, while those of the interior and mid- 
dle districts only experience the operation of that 
law from their remote situation, etc. ... This in- 
deed is a circumstance to be lamented, but such is 
the true state of our situation and therefore becomes 
a subject worthy of your consideration and one that 
I trust will engage your endeavors to render equally 
energetic in every part of the State that law which 
experience has proved partial in its operation and 
is oppressive upon’such citizens in the interior dis- 
tricts as hold it the object of desire to augment their 
capital in the accumulation of such property.’’!” 
‘VPOhareatey Courier, December 5, 1808. 


22 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


This expression of opinion from the Governor 
brought up in the House the appointment of “a com- 
mittee to inquire whether any and what amendments 
are necessary, to the Act entitled, ‘An Act to pre- 
vent Negro slaves from being brought into or en- 
tering this State’*; in the Senate a bill to permit 
their importation.*® 

The leading opponent in the Senate of the bill to 
permit importation was State Senator Robert Barn- 
well, at that time in his forty-second year. He had 
served with credit in the Revolutionary war, in the 
course of which he had been seriously wounded; had 
been a delegate to the Continental Congress; and 
later a member of Congress from the 2nd Congres- 
sional district of South Carolina, later still he had 
been elected Speaker of the South Carolina House 
of Representatives.” He is described by Edward 
Hooker as “a tall, portly, well-built man of about 
sixty years—a man of singular gravity, and pos- 
sessed of great influence in the Senate. Said to be 
an eminent orator and very religious character.’’2 

A synopsis of Mr. Barnwell’s remarks on this oc- 
- casion has been preserved, although, as became more 
and more the custom with regard to all utterances 
concerning slavery, in any way critical, much was 
Suppressed. The account reads as follows: ‘He 
maintained that by the immense influx of these per- 
sons into the State, the value of this species of prop- 
erty would be considerably diminished, insomuch 

Ibid. December 6, 1803. 

See ce Mag. Vol. 2, 72 
Annual Report American Hist. Ass. 1896, P vol. abt p. 870. 


23 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


that he did believe Negroes would be soon not worth 
one half of what they might be sold for. The 
value of the produce raised by their labor would be 
in like manner depreciated. * * * The permission 
given by the bill would lead to ruinous speculation. 
Everyone would purchase Negroes. It was well 
known that those who dealt in this property would 
sell it at a very long credit. Our citizens would 
purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate crops 
and favorable markets for making their payments 
and it would be found that South Carolina would in 
a few years, if this trade continued open, be in the 
same situation of debt, and subject to all the mis- 
fortunes which that situation had produced as at 
the conclusion of the Revolutionary war. The hon- 
orable member adduced in support of his opinion 
other arguments still more cogent and impressive, 
which from reasons very obvious, we decline mak- 
ing public.’’”? 

The most prominent advocate of the bill was State 
Senator William Smith, the schoolmate of Andrew 
Jackson, later judge, and, later still, United States 
Senator, the most determined of Calhoun’s politi- 
cal opponents in after years. He was a native of 
North Carolina, of somewhat indefinite age, a re- 
formed drunkard; but a man of firmness and power, 
and also of pleasing appearance.?? 

The report of his remarks upon this occasion is 
brevity itself, but sufficient to condemn him, as it is 
apparent that in a spirit of pessimism he voted 


Charleston Courier, December 26, 1803. 
Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 148. 


24 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


against his convictions. The report is: “Mr. Smith 
said he would agree to put a stop to the importation 
of Negroes but he believed it to be impossible. For 
this reason he would vote for the bill.’ The House 
had meantime reported that “the laws prohibiting 
the importation of Negroes can be so amended as to 
prevent their introduction among us,” but a strong 
faction were for action on the Senate bill. “Mr. 
Drayton was of the opinion that the committee 
should proceed to consider the bill from the Senate 
rather than the report of the committee of this 
House. He confessed that he was a friend to that 
bill in its utmost latitude. Many of the planters 
had cash which they could not so well dispose of as 
in purchasing Negroes, and he did not see why they 
should not be allowed to improve their estates in the 
best manner they were able, as well as merchants or 
any other class of persons.’’?5 

The House was not, however, swayed from its 
course. It proceeded to consider the report of the 
committee, and a bill in accordance therewith was 
arranged to be brought before the House on the 12th. 
On that date, upon a motion to postpone the second 
reading to February 1, 1804, the same was lost by 
a vote of 41 to 63; and upon the following day the 
bill from the Senate came up, and, by a vote of 55 
to 46, became a law.” With the majority appears 
only one great name, Langdon Cheves. With the 
Minority is recorded the name of a new member, 
Joseph Alston, destined to something of a career, 
" BOharleston Courier, ERAS 26, 1803, 

6Oity Gazette and Daily Advertiser, December 21, 1803. 


25 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


who on this occasion, in opposition to the bill per- 
mitting importation, made a notable speech.”” 


From the achievement of her independence in 
1783, South Carolina had legislated against the im- 
portation of Negro slaves with greater and greater 
severity. The indications are all that this reversal 
of her past policy was the result of the matter hav- 
ing been sprung as a surprise by Governor Richard- 
son in the second year of his term of office, when the 
Senate was two to one in favor of such action as he 
suggested, and even in the more popular branch of 
the Legislature a majority of nine in one hundred 
and one votes could be secured. Under these con- 
ditions, that a strong effort should have been at 
once inaugurated by those who opposed the impor- 
tation, to repeal the Act permitting same was natu- 
ral, and, upon the reassembling of the Legislature 
in the fall of 1804, a bill having such for its pur- 
pose was introduced, pressed to a vote in the Senate, 
and lost by only one vote, the record being 16 for, 
17 against repeal of Act permitting importation, and 
two absent.?8 

Four days later the House went into committee 
on the following resolution: “Resolved, that in the 
opinion of this House, it is inexpedient and impoli- 
tic to permit the importation of slaves into this 
State, and that a committee of five be appointed to 
bring in a bill for that purpose.”’2® The resolution 
was adopted by a vote of 69 to 39, and among the 
names of the majority appears that of William 
"aiMemoire of Aaron Burr, Vol. 2, p. 270. 

- Charleston Courier, December 12, 1804. 

2Tbid. December 24, 1804. 

26 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Lowndes. Thus the two Houses being unable to 
agree before adjournment, it was to be inferred, 
from the heavy majority in the House, against im- 
portation and the extremely narrow margin by 
which it had been sustained in the Senate, the fight 
would again be made, at the convening of the Legis- 
lature, in the fall of 1805. And so it was, for upon 
its reassembling Governor Paul Hamilton at once 
and pointedly referred to the subject in his message: 
“T should be wanting in my endeavors towards the 
public good were I to omit soliciting you to legislate 
on the importation of slaves. Abstractedly from 
other considerations of it, on which indeed much 
may be said, I feel myself bound to represent its 
continuance as productive of effects the most in- 
jurious, in draining us of our specie, thereby em- 
barrassing our commercial men and naturally les- 
_ Sening the sales of our produce; that viewed with 
reference to population it increases our weakness 
not our strength; for it must be admitted that in 
proportion as you add to the number of slaves, you 
prevent the influx of those men who would increase 
the means of defence and security. I will add, that 
an immediate stop to this traffic is, in my judgment, 
on every principle of sound policy, indispensable.’’®° 

The message at once engaged the attention of the 
newly elected House, to the Speakership of which 
Joseph Alston had been elected. The young Speaker 
was a most interesting personality. His father, 
with perhaps one exception, was the largest slave- 
owner in the State, and of the latter, we are in- 
<! 8Gharlaaton Courier, December 2, 1805. 


27 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


formed, that “in his opinion the true interests of the 
planter were in exact accord with the dictates of an 
enlightened humanity. The consequence was that 
his numerous plantations were models of neatness 
and order and his slaves always exhibited an ap- 
pearance of health and comfort, which spoke well 
for their treatment.’’*+ 

This election to the Speakership was the begin- 
ning of a political career for Joseph Alston, which 
soon led to the Governorship and might well have 
extended into national fields, had it not been for the 
tragedy which cut it short. He had just married 
Theodosia Burr, the fascinating and accomplished 
daughter of Aaron Burr. But the death of his only 
son in 1812 and almost immediately after, the loss 
of his wife at sea, seemed literally to destroy all his 
interest in life and take it from him. This debate 
in 1805, in which he was the foremost figure, is al- 
luded to in the diary of Edward Hooker, by whom 
we are informed that the principle speakers in the 
House were Simons, Alston, Miles, Taylor and 
Wright.: The resolution under consideration, as 
drawn up by Joseph Alston, was prefaced with 
several considerations, such as the inconsistency of 
the slave trade with the precepts of Christianity— 
with justice, humanity, etc., and later with the true 
interests of the State. In the argument of Mr. 
Miles, of Richland, appear the extraordinary in- 
sinuations of Governor Richardson, as to the in- 
justice of the law with regard to those who found 
it difficult to violate it, and whom it did prohibit 
~ 8iJervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 534. 

28 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


from importing slaves. Of the members of the 
House and Senate who sufficiently struck the atten- 
tion of Hooker to draw from him something like a 
pen portrait, Barnwell, Lowndes and Alston stand. 
out the clearest. He estimated Alston to be about 
twenty-eight years of age. He was not quite 
twenty-seven. He describes him thus: “Mr. Alston 
is a short man and rather thick. Of a dark com- 
plexion, with thick black hair and a formidable 
pair of whiskers, that cover a great part of his face, 
and nearly meet at the chin. His dress and de- 
meanor are well deserving the name buckish. When 
not in the legislative hall, he may be seen as often 
as anywhere, about the stables, looking at fine 
horses, dressed in a short jockey-like surtout or 
frock, and laced and tossled boots, with a segar in 
his mouth, and much more of the ‘gig and tandem’ 
levity than the austere virtues of a senatorial leader. 
Indeed he is one of the last persons that I should 
have picked out from the crowd of people in town 
for a president of one branch of the Legislature.” 
Of the speech he says: ‘‘Alston’s speech appears 
to me more like an extemporaneous one, though it is 
said by such as are acquainted with him that he 
always, without exception, writes his speeches. He 
like Simons, used notes, but did not recur to them so 
often; nor did he confine himself so much to method, 
nor avoid so scrupulously every expression not 
stamped with elegance, yet his arrangement was not 
bad, nor his language undignified. He did not at 
first speak with uncommon fluency, indeed he stam- 
mered a little, but when he became once fairly en- 


29 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


gaged his words appeared to flow with great ease. 
His figures and allusions were eminently striking 
and beautiful, and his speech abounded with them. 
He dropped some excellent moral and political sen- 
timents, quoted two or three texts of sublime moral- 
ity from the Scriptures, and with great vehemence 
and apparent sincerity urged the House to consult 
the dictates of justice and humanity, in opposition 
to sordid interest. His manner of delivery was ex- 
tremely good and his gestures forcible and expres- 
sive. He labored some time, and with success, to 
show that the increase of slaves tends to destroy 
that equality which is the basis of our republican in- 
stitutions and insists that it is not only unjust to 
bring them in, but demonstrably injurious to the 
real interests of the State. In his argument was a 
fund of good sense and useful information. The 
utmost silence pervaded the House while he spoke 
thirty-five or forty minutes.’’? 

The resolution was adopted, and the bill prohibit- 
ing importation was sent to the Senate by a vote of 
56 to 28.38 

Later, by the same pen, we have a brief descrip- 
tion of the last speech upon this bill of that Senator, 
who in opposition to it, may be said to have cast the 
most important vote he was ever called upon to give. 

Allusion has been before made to the brief reason 
given by Senator William Smith for his vote, for 
opening the ports to importation of slaves, which he 
declared himself not in favor of, but thought it im- 


Annual Report American Hist. Assn. 1896, Vol. 1, p. 868. 
3Charleston Courier, December 13, 1805. 


30 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


possible to prevent, in 1803, when he, constituting 
one of the majority of two to one in that branch of 
the General Assembly, voted to open them. Public 
opinion had swept away that great majority, and 
from the House, with just such a vote, two to one, 
the bill to prohibit came to the Senate. The follow- 
ing is Hooker’s description of the situation, and 
the part played by Smith: 

“The bill having passed the lower House, the pub- 
lic feeling is excited about its event here. Mr. Smith, 
a lawyer from York District, made a long and rather 
tedious speech against it. He is not fluent, nor does 
he use the handsomest language, but in the course 
of his argument gets out considerable that is to the 
purpose.’’*+ 

Smith’s vote was sufficient to kill the bill. It 
failed of passage by 15 to 16 in the Senate.**> He 
thus, by his vote alone made impossible, what he 
claimed to favor, but declined to support, because he 
asserted he believed to be impossible. Later in the 
United States Senate he disclosed, that in the four 
years he thus secured for the slave trade to pour its 
flood upon South Carolina, in 202 vessels, 39,075 
slaves were brought into the port of Charleston*® 
for which he had the effrontery to hold almost 
everybody but himself responsible. This disastrous 
piece of legislation increased the Negro population 
of South Carolina in that decade 41 per cent, against 
an increase of only 9 per cent whites, and checked 
almost entirely the remarkable increase of whites, 
Gi estan Report American Hist. Assn. Vol. 1, p. 878, 1896. 


®Oharleston Courier, December 9, 1805. 
Charleston Year Book, 1880, p. 263. 


31 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


which had marked the previous decade. As to the 
effect upon the business of Charleston, in the remi- 
niscence of one of the editors of the daily press, we 
have an illuminating illustration of the truth of 
Senator Barnwell’s prophecy. Says Mr. Thomas: 
“In November 1808, I returned from my fourth voy- 
age with a printed catalogue of fifty thousand vol- 
umes of books in every branch of literature, arts 
and sciences, being by far the largest importation 
ever made into the United States. I had only got 
them opened and arranged for sale three days when 
news arrived from Columbia that the Legislature 
then in session had opened the port for the importa- 
tion of slaves from Africa. The news had not been 
five hours in the city before two large British 
Guineamen that had been laying off and on the port 
for several days, expecting it, came up to town, and 
from that day my business began to decline, al- 
though then in a situation to carry it on to three 
times the extent I had ever done before. Previous 
to this the planters had large sums of money laying 
idle in the banks, which they liberally expended not 
only for their actual, but supposed wants. A great 
change at once took place in everything. Vessels 
were fitted out in numbers for the coast of Africa, 
and as fast as they returned their cargoes were 
bought up with avidity, not only consuming the large 
funds which had been accumulating, but all that 
could be procured, and finally exhausting credit and 
mortgaging the slaves for payment, many of whom 
were not redeemed for ten years afterwards to my 
knowledge.’’?? 

“7 a"Thomas’s Reminiscences, Case Tiffany & Burnham, Vol. 2, p. 35. 


32 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


On the other hand the State of Ohio, which had 
been admitted in 1800 with 45,628 whites and only 
336 colored, was so disturbed by the growth of its 
colored population that before they reached in num- 
ber two thousand, that State passed the notorious 
Black Laws of January 9, 1805, of which Section 4 
reads as follows: “That no black or mulatto person 
shall hereafter be permitted to be sworn or give 
evidence in any Court of record or elsewhere in the 
State in any cause depending or matter of contro- 
versy, where either party to the same is a white 
person, or in any prosecution which shall be in- 
stituted in behalf of this State against any white 
person.’’®§ 


While South Carolina did not permit the full 
sweep of such in her Courts,*® holding a free person 
of color born of a free white woman an admissible 
witness yet, with such legislation in Ohio, and In- 
diana, it is not surprising, Fiske, of New York, six 
years later failed to establish his contention that 
“color was a mere matter of accident * * * All men 
were born free and equal’; and that his attempt 
to reject the Senate amendment to the Orleans bill, 
i. e. the insertion of the word “white” before the 
words “free male inhabitants,” in defining the elec- 
torate, should have been brushed aside by Sheffey, of 
Virginia, with the simple declaration that “such 
doctrines would prostrate the civil institutions of 
Virginia.”* It was one thing to protest as Col. 
Mason did against the slave trade; but, with some 
“USC, Tae) Marteoift, Ohio University, Nov. 30, 1909. 

8. C. Reports, Brevard, Vol. 2, p. 145. State vs. McDowell. 

“Charleston Courier, February 27, 1811. 


33 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


four hundred thousand slaves, double what any 
other State possessed, Virginia was prepared to con- 


tend for her property rights, and the position seems ~ 


to have been met with acquiescence by Congress. 


34 


CHAPTER III 


Concerning free persons of color in the United 
States, of whom there were about 210,000, to 1,550,- 
000 Negro slaves, in 1816, it was asserted, in the 
petition of the Kentucky Abolition Society to Con- 
gress, which asked that a suitable territory should 
be set apart as asylum for emancipated Negroes and 
mulattoes, “that when emancipated they were not 
allowed the privileges of free citizens and were 
prohibited from emigrating to other States and 
Territories.’’* 

Certainly if their testimony could only be re- 
ceived in courts of justice in cases, when not in 
opposition to the interests of the whites, which was 
the situation in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, their 
ability to protect themselves against injury from 
whites was seriously affected, but, at the same time, 
that this tiny stream, trickling into Ohio, was thus 
harshly dammed, the Negroes were pouring into 
South Carolina in such numbers, that legislation 
against their introduction from other States and 
Territories was passed.*? 

But again the same desire for ephemeral benefits 
to a class, which had sufficed to overthrow a wise 
law in 18038, induced action for repeal in 1818, and, 
with lamentable lack of foresight, the brilliant 
George McDuffie led the fight for the repeal of the 
law of 1816. 

By the census of 1810, the colored population of 
South Carolina was 200,919, the white only 214,196. 


“1Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 67. 
“Statutes of S. C. Vol. 7, p. 451. 


35 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


With the exception of Louisiana, just admitted, 
with a colored population of 42,245, and a white 
population of 34,311, no State in the Union had, 
proportionately to its white, as great a Negro popu- 
lation as South Carolina. The increase of its colored 
population had been so accelerated by the mischiev- 
ous action of Governor Richardson and his sup- 
porters in 1808, as to have increased almost two 
and a half times as much as that of Maryland, the 
Negro population of which, as has been before 
pointed out, was greater than that of South Caro- 
lina in 1790, and had increased from that day to 
1800 in a greater proportion compared to its white 
population, than South Carolina. 

It is true the increase of the colored population 
of North Carolina had also been very great; but, at 
the same time, the increase of the white population ~ 
had been much greater than in South Carolina, and 
it had had originally so much larger a number of 
white inhabitants that they were still more than 
double the number of blacks. | 

To a large and important portion of South Caro- 
lina’s legislators, therefore, the evil of this con- 
tinual increase of the Negro population was appar- 
ent, and these under the leadership of Robert Y. 
Hayne, at that time Speaker of the House, opposed 
the repeal of the law of 1816. 

Unfortunately no Hooker was present to record 
his impressions of the discussion, and all that we 
know of this great struggle is, that the Act of 1816 
was repealed after “one of the most eloquent and 
animated debates that has taken place on the floor 


36 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


for many years.’** In the Senate the repeal was 
only secured by a vote of 22 to 19. 

In the year which followed came in Congress the 
first great sectional struggle over the Missouri. 
Question, involving the right of Southern men to 
move into the Northwest with their slaves, with 
regard to which some of them argued, that, in the 
long run, such diffusion of slaves would not in- 
crease their number or result in the extension of 
slavery, but rather tend to check the increase. 

In his contemporaneous publication of speeches 
from both sides, the editor of Niles’ Register regrets 
his inability to secure a copy of the speech of Wil- 
liam Lowndes, which, in all probability would have 
been the most illuminating exposition of the South- 
ern view, which could have been submitted; but the 
speech of Tucker, of Virginia, does put forward the 
idea as about stated; while Sergeant, of Pennsyl- 
vania, the leading speaker on the Northern side, 
combats the same at sufficient length to create the 
impression, that it was held by more than one. But 
what is of greater interest is the distinct note of 
racial inferiority, which Sergeant sounds loudly. 
It is not only objection to the Negro slave; but to 
the Negro per se; ... “Nature has placed upon 
them an unalterable mark . . . They are and must 
forever remain distinct.’’* 

Senator Smith, who, by his vote in the South Caro- 
lina Legislature in 1805 had most materially as- 
sisted in setting aside the South Carolina law in 


“Charleston Courier, Dec. 22, 1818. 80 
“4Niles’ Register, Vol. 18, D. 383. AAA coche ie ; 


37 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


opposition to African importation, while at the 
same time fatuously declaring that he only did so 
because he thought it impossible to prevent it, now, 
in the United States Senate, refused all compromise, 
declaring that by sanctioning the slave trade in the 
Constitution, the Federal Government was respon- 
sible for existing conditions. But a compromise 
was effected, and in the year 1820, the Union, then 
consisting of just double the number of the original 
thirteen States, adjusted the difference on the Negro 
Question. 

Geographically considered it was apparent that 
the black belt had slipped a little lower down upon 
the body politic. The total colored population of the 
Union was 1,771,856, more than half of whom were 
to be found in the three States of Virginia, North 
Carolina and South Carolina. In Virginia, 402,031; 
in South Carolina, 265,301; in North Carolina, 
219,629; a total of 886,961. Southwest of this sec- 
tion and south of the Ohio River, the Negro popula- 
tion amounted to 529,856; but in no State in the 
Union had the increase since 1800 been so enormous 
as in South Carolina; for with an area and white 
population only two-fifths of Virginia, the increase 
of the Negro population of the two States had prac- 
tically been the same, viz.: 156,538 for Virginia, 
156,457 for South Carolina. Nor could any com- 
forting reassurance have been drawn from the fact 
that the percentage of increase of the same species 
of population in the States of Georgia, Tennessee 
and Kentucky had been greater; for such had been 
accompanied, in these newer States, with an even 


38 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


greater increase of their white population, and was 
based upon an original Negro population very small ° 
indeed, when compared to that of South Carolina 
in 1800. When comparison was made with Mary- 
land, on the other hand, where the number of Ne- 
groes had originally been greater than in South 
Carolina, with the increase of the whites in the three 
decades not so great, small as had been the increase 
of the whites, it was yet greater than that of the 
colored, and originally the proportion of whites had 
been greater. 


From all these causes South Carolina was becom- 
ing in place of Virginia the State most identified 
with the Negro question, in a section where it was 
becoming a larger and more important property in- 
terest. 


Yet, while the increase of the Negro population 
in the lower South and Middle and Southwest had 
been very great, the census furnished no evidence 
of that movement of Negroes from North to South 
which has been so often alluded to. The Negro 
population of New York had increased by more than 
50 per cent; New Jersey by at least 43; Connecticut, 
40; and Delaware 38. Pennsylvania’s increase in 
the 30 years had been 200 per cent, and even in Mass- 
achusetts the increase had been 22 per cent. The 
only State in which there had been a decrease, which 
could be attributed to a movement to another sec- 
tion, was Rhode Island, and it was not large enough 
to be considered, amounting in all to less than a 
thousand. Considering the population of the South- 
ern States, however, the census afforded informa- 


39 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


tion well warranting the assumption that from Vir- 
ginia and Maryland between the years 1810 and 
1820 some 380,000 colored people had moved out. 
In the same time the colored population of North 
Carolina had increased by an accession of about 
40,000; South Carolina, 65,000; Georgia, 44,000; 
Alabama, 24,000; Mississippi, 16,000; Louisiana, 
35,000; Tennessee, 37,000; and Missouri, 7,000; 
the percentage of increase being, North Carolina 
24 per cent; South Carolina 32 per cent; Georgia 42 
per cent; Mississippi 95 per cent; Louisiana 55 per 
cent; Tennessee 80 per cent; Kentucky 58 per cent; 
and Missouri nearly 300 per cent, with no basis with 
which to estimate the 42,000 of Alabama. 

These figures establish a movement from Virginia 
and Maryland but also from without, to the eight 
States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and 
Kentucky, averaging about 45 per cent increase in 
the decade, and with every reasonable allowance for 
the movement from Virginia and Maryland and 
New York, of which at least one-third must have 
gone to the Northwest and Missouri, illegal impor- 
tation must have been proceeding apace. Now, if 
there was illegal importation, where would it be 
most likely to occur? 

In Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee; and 
there we find an increase of nearly 85 per cent, or an 
addition to the Negro population of something like 
88,000. 

These facts, therefore, disclose the weakness of the 
Southern argument that the diffusion of slaves 


40 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


would not have resulted in any extension of slavery. 
Theoretically it was a sound argument, that the 
slaves being spread over the face of the country, 
they and their masters would be brought more and 
more under the influences which would work against 
slavery and for emancipation. But if illicit im- 
portation from abroad was proceeding to any great 
extent, the premise upon which the argument was 
based gave way, and this is what must have been 
the case, as has been shown. 


This is also where the argument of Prof. Ulrich 
Bonnell Phillips fails to convince, when he expresses 
the opinion, that ‘‘the importance of the repeal, in 
1818, of the law which had prohibited the importa- 
tion of slaves from other States into South Caro- 
lina has been exaggerated.’ He bases his reason 
for this view upon the claim that “the Federal Cen- 
suses show that the average rate of increase of the 
Negro population in South Carolina between 1810 
and 1860, was substantially smaller than that of 
the Negroes in the United States at large, “which” 
he thinks, “‘indicates that South Carolina was in that 
half century more of a slave exporting than a slave 
importing State; and that a prohibition of slave im- 
ports would have had no appreciable influence upon 
the ratio of increase of her Negro population.’’*® 

Unless it can be shown, however, that there were 
no accessions to the Negro population of the United 
States from without, between the periods selected by 
Prof. Phillips, the mere fact that the rate of increase 
of the Negro population of South Carolina was sub- 
VP aapeeuaeitise Review, Vol. 15, No. 8, p. 6380. 

41 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


stantially smaller than that of the United States at 
large does not establish that South Carolina was 
more of a slave exporting than importing State for 
that period; for the greater increase without could 
well be due to importation in great volume else- 
where, and that there was such was asserted by 
many, notably by Henry Middleton, in Congress, the 
very year of Hayne’s speech in the South Carolina 
Legislature against importations from other States.*® 
But apart from this, before this, South Carolina had 
become the State with the largest Negro population 
to its white population of all the States of the Union 
and that, the rate of increase of her Negro popula- 
tion from this date, or even a decade earlier, to 1860, 
‘was substantially smaller than that of the Negroes 
in the United States at large’ was simply due to 
the tremendous accessions of the Negro population 
of the four new cotton States: Georgia, Alabama, 
Mississippi, and Louisiana, superimposed upon a 
Negro population originally much smaller than that 
of South Carolina. The Negro population of those 
four States did in that period increase 1,384,555; 
but in the same time their white population increased 
1,438,607; while in the same period the white and 
Negro population of South Carolina increased re- 
spectively 53,860 and 147,028. And so difficult was 
it to overcome this tremendous start attained by 
South Carolina in these early fatal years, that in 
1860 the excess of South Carolina’s colored popula- 
tion over her white population was 121,029, as com- 
pared with an excess of only 838,505 for Mississippi, 
~ «Suppression of Slave Trade, DuBois, p. 124. 
42 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the next greatest. Undoubtedly in the period 
selected by Prof. Phillips many Negro slaves passed 
out of South Carolina; but many whites did also; 
for “from 1820 to 1860, South Carolina was a bee- 
hive from which swarms were continually going 
forth to populate the newer growing cotton States 
of the Southwest,” and “‘in 1860 there were then liv- 
ing in other States 198,389 white persons born in 
South Carolina.’’*?7 In the half century the average 
rate of increase of South Carolina whites was 
between 7 and 8 per cent, colored 21. In Virginia 
and Maryland in 1810 the Negro population 
amounted to 668,515. It increased by 1860 by an 
addition of 151,528. In South Carolina in 1810 the 
Negro population amounted to 200,919, by 1860 it 
had received an addition of 212,401, of which 64,3882 
had arrived in the decade of the repeal of the law 
prohibiting importation from other States, and 58,- 
021 in the following decade. It is true that in the 
following decade from 1830 to 1840, the increase of 
the Negro population of South Carolina was com- 
paratively slight, being only 11,992, but it was fol- 
lowed in the next decade by again an increase of 
58,630, while the white increase in the same two 
decades was respectively 2,221 and 15,479. 

But there was another way of measuring the im- 
portance of the repeal. Necessarily with the in- 
flowing tide came some such as Denmark Vesey and 
Gullah Jack, slaves and free Negroes whose past was 
not known, and according to the report of the Mass- 
achusetts legislative committee in 1821, dealing 
MatMsGrady K C. Under Proprietary Govt. p. 1. 

43 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


with only 6,740 free persons of color in the State, 
among other “evils,” from such, appeared, inter 
alia: 

2. Collecting in the large towns an indolent and 
disorderly and corrupt population. 

3. Substituting themselves in many labors and 
occupations which in the end it would be more ad- 
vantageous to have performed by the white and 
native population of the State.*§ 

It is apparent then, from this, as well as from 
the arguments of Mr. Sergeant, that the real situa- 
tion of the representatives of the two sections, in 
the great Missouri debate, has never been put with 
absolute accuracy. It was an assertion upon the 
part of the Southerners of their right to carry their 
property with them wherever they went in the 
Union, and upon the part of the Northerners a 
denial of this right. It precipitated an argument 
whether extension and diffusion of slavery meant 
the same thing, many Southern men, of eminence, 
contended that by the process of diffusion there 
would be apt to be the beginning of the end of 
slavery, and if there had been no illicit importation 
of slaves possible, there would have been great 
merit in this suggestion. But beyond all these ar- 
guments on the part of the Northerners, the Mis- 
sourl Question indicated opposition to the mere pres- 
ence of the Negro, bond or free, in the Northwest. 
He was an undesirable resident. 


48Studies American Race Problem, Stone, p. 57. Robert Y. Hayne & 
His Times, Jervey, p. 114. 


44 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Up to this time, in the main, the attitude of the 
Southern statesmen had been free from sectionalism. 
On the other hand, New England had exhibited 
sectionalism, and it was New England’s deputies 
in the Constitutional Convention, who joining with 
those of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina 
and Georgia, had “formed a bargain,” abrogating 
the slave trade in such a way as practically to recog- 
nize slavery as a property interest secured by the 
Constitution. The time allowed the slave trade had 
been long enough, as Madison had said it would be. 
As great as had been the rate of increase of the 
white population, it had been exceeded by that of 
the colored in the proportions of 90 to 95 per cent. 
What Col. Mason had prophesied had also come to 
pass. He had declared in 1787: ‘“‘The Western peo- 
ple are already calling out for slaves for their new 
lands and will fill that country with slaves, if they 
can be got through South Carolina and Georgia.” 

They had been got no doubt in large numbers 
through South Carolina and Georgia; but also, in 
‘all probabilities, through Louisiana, and if not 
through, to some extent from, Maryland and Vir- 
ginia. The Negro population had in the West, in 
three decades sprung up from 16,322 to 385,825; 
while the seven States, Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and 
Louisiana, held some 1,193,732 head of this species 
of property, representing an investment of some- 
thing like $477,492,800, stamped as property by 
having been made dutiable under Federal law up to 
1808. Such a property interest was almost certain 


45 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


to produce a sectional policy for its protection, and 
in the assertion of such a policy, South Carolina 
having the largest stake and the most forceful rep- 
resentatives, would naturally take the lead. 

The consequences were that the broad national 
policy of Lowndes, from this date gradually suc- 
cumbed to the influences which forced Calhoun away 
from it, despite his efforts to mould into one form a 
national and sectional policy, based upon the de- 
clared recognition of slavery, in place of, or in ad- 
dition to, the implied recognition furnished by the 
Constitutional compromise or “bargain” over the 
sanction of the slave trade up to 1808. As the 
South drew together in support of slavery, the over- 
shadowing dimensions of its greatest exponent cast 
into oblivion Barnwell, Hamilton. and Alston, who 
had so clearly perceived the dangers from its in- 
crease, and even reduced the proportions of men as 
preéminently great as Lowndes and his successor, 
Robert Y. Hayne. 

As long as the tariff held the center of the stage, 
the change was not so clearly apparent; but with 
the settling down, after the explosion of sentiment 
which nullification occasioned, the division between 
the sections was unmistakable. From that period 
the Lower South presented an unbroken front in 
defence of slavery, under the leadership of South 
Carolina. 

From 1800 the South had, to a great extent, di- 
rected the policies of the Republic, and, in the per- 
sons of Lowndes, Cheves and Calhoun, South Caro- 
lina had from 1813 to 1820 been a potent influence 


46 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


therein; but the Missouri Compromise and Tay- 
lor’s election over Lowndes in 1820, for the Speaker- 
ship, marked the beginning of the change. No man 
saw it more clearly than the great man whom Tay- 
lor defeated. His views on the condition of affairs 
at this time is thus expressed by a contemporary: 
“The Northern people had outstripped the South- 
ern and desired to see the offices of the Government 
in~Northern._hands. This inevitable result Mr. 
Lowndes saw clearly forty years ago, and thought 
it wise for the South to yield the hold she had so 
long possessed on political power, when she was no 
longer able to retain it.’”*® The clear judgment of 
Lowndes had revealed to him what the fatal bril- 
liancy of Calhoun’s intellect prevented him from 
perceiving, viz.: that there could not be fashioned 
for the needs of imperfect humanity a perfectly 
symmetrical policy. Lowndes had brought Web- 
ster and Clay together and pushed through the tariff 
bill of 1816.°° 

Of that bill in reply to the fierce criticism that it 
was the worst thing done since universal suffrage, 
he simply said, “neither was altogether good, but 
the best possible for the time.’”’ “He thought some 
protection due to infant industries and that the 
question was, what measure of protection do they 
require?” He held; “We are obliged to leave some 
questions to posterity. We do our best with those 
that come to us and future generations must bear 
their share of the trouble.’ Accordingly, when 


Grayson, Memoir of James L. Petigru, p. 116. 
City Gazette, Sept. 16, 1820. . 
Ravenel, Life & Times of William Lowndes, p. 154-5. 


47 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the Baldwin bill of 1820 was brought forward, “‘he 
opposed it on the ground that the increased duties 
were not necessary.’*? Before the tariff bill of 
1824 could be presented, he had passed away; but 
in his place, to share with Webster, the honors of 
the splendid fight against it, South Carolina had 
sent up to Congress Robert Y. Hayne, by Benton 
extolled as: “Of all the young generation of states- 
men coming on I consider him the safest, the most 
like William Lowndes, and best entitled to future 
eminent lead.’’®* 

How well Hayne lived up to this a study of his 
achievements exhibits. But while so good a judge 
as the late Edward M. Shepard, in his Life of Van 
Buren, ranks Hayne’s effort in the Senate, against 
the tariff of 1824, as fully up to, if not beyond, that 
of Webster in the House, scarcely any attention is 
paid to it by those historians who extoll the speech 
of Webster. 


Again, while almost every history deals at length 
with the Senatorial debates, and elaborates Hayne’s 
speech on the Panama Mission in 1825, absolutely 
no mention appears concerning the far more impor- 
tant utterance with regard to the Colonization So- 
ciety in 1827. Yet Hayne’s speech, in his debate 
with Chambers over the Colonization Society, is one 
of the most important utterances ever made by a 
Southern Statesman. It indicates what was the 
prevailing view with regard to the Negro Question, : 
before the unfortunate episode of nullification, by 


Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 112. 
53Benton, Thirty Years View, Vol. 2, p. 188. 


48 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


which Calhoun fastened upon the South the belief 
that slavery as it existed in the Southern States, was 
-agood. In the speech in 1827, Hayne first showed 
the absurdity of the scheme of transporting the 
blacks to Africa in such a number as to affect the 
situation. That the presence of Negroes in the 
country was an evil, he did not attempt to deny, 
but declared, “The progress of time and events is 
providing a remedy for the evil.” He showed by 
statistics that the relative increase of free white 
population was rising, while that of the colored, 
whether bond or free, was diminishing, and that 
“while this process is going on the colored classes 
are gradually diffusing themselves throughout the 
country, and are making steady advances in intel- 
ligence and refinement, and if half the zeal were 
displayed in bettering their condition that is wasted 
in the vain and fruitless effort of sending them 
abroad, their intellectual and moral improvement 
would be steady and rapid.’*+ Why is it that this 
utterance of the leader of his party in the Senate 
is never alluded to by historians? Is it because it 
invites investigation as to the condition of the 
blacks in the Northern and Western States at this 
period and for the twenty years which followed? 
It is difficult to tell. But from this time the ques- 
tion took a change. Subordinating to it the tariff 
and the interest in railroad development, with the 
conditions created by nullification by 1833, the State 
of South Carolina, and, by 1839, the South, was com- 


‘4Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, pp. 205-209. Abridgment of 
Debates of Congress, Vol. 9, p. 303, et seq. 


49 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


mitted to the view of Calhoun: “Our fate as a peo- 
ple is bound up in the question. If we yield, we will 
be extirpated; but if we successfully resist, we will 
be the greatest and most flourishing people of mod- 
ern time. It is the best substratum of population 
in the world, and one on which great and flourish- 
ing Commonwealths may be most easily and safely 
reared.’®> And to this “Negro substratum popula- 
tion” policy both the tariff and the railroad develop- 
ment of the South were accordingly subordinated un- 
til Calhoun’s death, when Georgia, as a result of 
having outstripped South Carolina in both men and 
material, stepped into the place of leadership South 
Carolina could no longer fill, and with the ambi- 
tious scheme of forcing slavery to the Pacific, in ten 
years, produced the War Between the States. 


55Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 868. 


50 


CHAPTER IV 


As has been shown, nine years subsequent to his 
unavailing struggle to restrict the swelling propor- 
tions of the Negro population in his own State, 
Robert Y. Hayne, in the United States Senate, stated 
his views concerning that class of our population 
with regard to the entire country. But before dis- 
cussing that further it should be noted, that a re- 
newed effort in 1822 had again been defeated by the 
narrow but effective majority of nine votes, draw- 
ing from Governor Bennett, of South Carolina the 
pessimistic declaration: 


“The evil is entailed and we can do no more than steadily 
to pursue that course indicated by stern necessity and not 
less imperious policy.’’5¢ 


Along another line, therefore, was the last peace- 
ful effort to be made to solve the Negro Question. 
Taken in connection with the great industrial work, 
in which he literally wore out his life, in 18389, 
Hayne’s speech in the United States Senate in 1827 
is most illuminating. Upon that occasion he said: 


“The history of this country has proved that when the 
relative proportion of the colored population to the white 
is greatly diminished, slaves cease to be valuable, and eman- 
cipation follows of course, and they are swallowed up in the 
common mass. Wherever free labor is put in full and suc- 
cessful operation, slave labor ceases to be profitable. It 
is true that it is a very gradual operation and that it must 
be, to be successful or desirable.’’57 


*Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 135. 


ob ibie p. 208. Abridgment of Debates of Congress, Vol. 19. p. 308 
et seq. 


51 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Was it not the very irony of fate that, as this 
speaker, later, in 1839, lay dying at Asheville, North 
Carolina, while a wordy war was being waged over 
his great railroad to the West, criticism should 
have been “directed against the contracts given to 
planters to be executed with slave labor” by the chief 
lieutenant of that great South Carolinian, who had 
only the year before, in withdrawing from the en- 
terprise, extolled Negro slaves as “the best sub- 
stratum of population in the world?” 

Col. Gadsden, from this time and on, more and 
more a confidant of Calhoun until they parted over 
Taylor’s candidacy for the Presidency, asked: 

“Why had not the work been given to Northern contrac- 
tors, who had offered to execute it at a price 12% to 15 
per cent cheaper? The answer was comprehensive. The 
planters objected to imported free labor being brought into 
contact with their slaves. This was unfortunate, but the 
company could not antagonize an element which practically 
controlled the State; and in addition they had in many in- 
stances given the right of way. But further still, when the 
chief engineer obtained the floor, he ene e Re the correct- 
ness of the charge.’’58 

Between 1830 and 1840, two Southern States, 
South Carolina and Maryland, leading the Union in 
railroad development, were endeavoring to effect 
railroad connection with the Northwest. A com- 
parison of their conditions prior and subsequent to 
1810, suggests one of the reasons why one succeeded 
and the other failed. : 

From 1790 to 1810 the white population of Mary- 
land increased from 208,649 to 235,117, or about 
"LB8y aprey obert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 511. 

52 


WW 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


11.10 per cent. In the same twenty years the white 
population of South Carolina rose from 140,178 to 
214,196 or about 51.20 per cent. It is quite true that 
in the same period the Negro population in South 
Carolina increased from 108,805 to 200,919 or 85.6 
per cent, while that of Maryland rose only from 
111,079 to 145,129 or only 30.07 per cent. Yet, when 
we bear in mind that the area of South Carolina 
was two and a half times as great as Maryland, 
had the efforts which had been made in 1816 and in 
1822 to stop Negro importation from outside suc- 
ceeded, the economic conditions of South Carolina 
between 1830 and 1840 might have been stronger. 
Indeed in 1822 Gen. Thomas Pinckney declared 
cheap Negro labor, even then, was steadily under- 
mining the white artisan class in South Carolina.” 
He was patriot enough to so declare, although his 
own great brother was more responsible than any 
one else for the evil. 

In the three decades which followed 1810, and 
closed with the death of Hayne and the destruction 
of his five year effort to secure the Northwestern 
railroad connection, the colored population of Mary- 
land, which did secure it, increased only 6,396, from 
145,429 to 151,815, while its white population in the 
Same period rose from 235,117 to 318,204, an in- 
crease of 83,087. In South Carolina in the same 
time the white population rising from 214,196 to 
259,344 increased only 44,888, about one-half as 
much, while its Negro population rising from 200,314 
to 335,344, or 134,395, about twenty times as much 


Ibid. p. 180. 
53 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


as Maryland. Viewed in the light of the unfair 
criticism directed against the South Carolina Rail- 
road, was not the message of Governor Paul Hamil- 
ton in 1804, to the South Carolina Legislature, vin- 
dicated? 


“Viewed with reference to population it increases our 
weakness, not our strength, for it must be admitted that 
in proportion as you add to the number of slaves, you pre- 
vent the influx of those men who would increase the means 
of defense and security.’’® 


How our forgotten great men fought to avoid the 
Nessus Shirt! Who remembers that Hamilton was 
big enough to be made Secretary of the Navy? Un- 
der the great upas tree of South Carolina all other 
greatness languished and by 1840 the property in- 
terests in Negroes had become so immense, that it 
not only paralyzed other industries, which could by 
any stretch of imagination be thought to threaten 
its efficiency, but it affected public opinion to a de- 
gree which now seems hardly credible. 

Calhoun’s view in 1838, that the Negro furnished 
“the best substratum of population in the world 
and the one on which commonwealths may be most 
easily and safely reared” was not singular in the 
South at that date. The great meeting of South- 
ern business men at Augusta, Ga. in 1838 put on 
record its belief: 


“That of all the social conditions of man, the most favor- 
able to the development of the cardinal virtues of the heart 
and the noblest faculties of the soul, to the promotion of pri- 


SCharleston Courier, Dec. 2, 1805. 
6i1Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 368. 


54 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


vate happiness and public prosperity, is that of slave holding 
communities under free political institutions.’ 


Even Hayne, himself, despite his realization of 
South Carolina’s wasteful cultivation of her soil, was 
so affected by the tremendous interests involved in 
slavery, and the fearful shock of any such distur- 
bance as the Abolitionists threatened in 1835, as to 
declare at that time: 


“Slavery, as it now exists in the Southern States, which 
we all feel and know to be essential to the prosperity and 
welfare—nay to the very existence of the States—is so lit- 
tle understood in other portions of the Union that it has 
been lately assailed in a spirit which threatens, unless 
speedily arrested, to lead eventually to the destruction of 
the Union and all the evils which must attend so lamentable 
an occurence.’’63 


By 1838, conditions had reached such a develop- 
ment that the abolition of slavery could come but in 
one of two ways, either peacefully, through the slow 
process of changing industrial conditions, or swiftly 
and forcibly, as a war measure; therefore, when 
Calhoun withdrew his support from Hayne’s rail- 
road to the Northwest in 1838, the sensible course 
would have been to prepare for the inevitable con- 
flict. 

Allusion has been made to the Black Laws of Ohio, 
which had their counterpart in Indiana and Illinois, 
and reference had to the Report of the Massachu- 
setts Legislative Committee in 1821, as indicative of 
feeling in the North and Northeast, concerning the 
Negro as a citizen, and, if we consider conditions in 


®Charleston Courier, April 9, 18388. 
&Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 389. 


55 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the Middle States at this period, we will find them 
hardly different. As depicted by the most highly 
educated member of the Negro race today in the 
United States, in Philadelphia conditions were as 
follows: 


“By 1830 the black population of the city and districts 
had increased to 15,624, an increase of 27 per cent for the 
decade 1820-1830, and of 48 per cent since 1810. Neverthe- 
less the growth of the city had far outstripped this; by 1830 
the county had nearly 175,000 whites, among whom was a 
rapidly increasing contingent of 5,000 foreigners. So in- 
tense was the race antipathy among the lower classes, and 
so much countenance did it receive from the middle and up- 
per classes, that there began in 1829 a series of riots directed 
chiefly against Negroes, which recurred frequently until 
about 1840, and did not wholly cease until after the war.’’64 


At this date, 1840, in ten of the eleven States 
which later constituted the Confederacy, there were 
3,911,117 whites and 2,267,319 Negroes; and in three 
of them; South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, 
the whites were in the minority, and they, therefore, 
best represented the condition which Calhoun in 
1838 extolled. 

With such views, what more natural than that 
Calhoun should view as a “humbug” the great rail- 
road measure of Hayne, founded as it was in some 
degree upon the belief of the latter that “wherever 
free labor is put in full and successful operation, 
slave labor ceases to be profitable.”’ A railroad con- 
necting Cincinnati with Charleston would certainly 
have tended to “put in full and successful operation 


DuBois; The Philadelphia Negro, p. 26. 
®Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 368. 


56 


THE SLAVE TRADE | 


free labor,” and slave labor ceasing more and more 
to be profitable would have gradually passed out of 
existence in that region. 

Yet it must be admitted, that the greatest writer 
and thinker who has ever discussed America, view- 
ing conditions at that time, while utterly opposed 
to slavery, practically endorsed Calhoun’s views. 
Summing up his conclusion in 1838, de Tocqueville 
writes: 


“When I contemplate the condition of the South, I can 
only discover two alternatives which may be adopted by 
the white inhabitants of those States; either to emancipate 
the Negroes and to intermingle with them; or remain isolated 
from them to keep them in a state of slavery as long as 
possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely to 
terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of civil 
wars, and perhaps in the extirpation of one or the other 
of the two races.’’66 


Time, however, has proven that both de Tocque- 
ville and Calhoun were wrong. 

From a Negro minority of 13,277 in 1810, the 
census indicated for South Carolina in 1840, a Negro 
majority of 76,230 an excess of the Negro popula- 
tion over the white of more than double what ex- 
isted in Louisiana and quadruple that of Mississippi. 

In 1848, for the better controlling of this “best 
substratum of population in the world’’®™ only five 
years after its discovery as such, the following Act 
was passed by the General Assembly of South Caro- 
lina: 


“Tocqueville: Democracy in America, Vol. 2, p. 245. 
S’Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 868. 


57 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives 
now met and sitting, and by the authority of the same: 
That from and after the passage of this Act, any slave or 
free person of color who shall commit an assault and bat- 
tery on a white woman with intent to commit rape, on being 
thereof convicted, shall suffer death without benefit of 
clergy.’’68 

For whites, it was not apparently necessary to 
raise the grade of the offense from that of a mis- 
demeanor. But if the above Act was not a sufficient 
vindication of the opposition of Barnwell, Paul Ham- 
ilton, Alston and Hayne to the continued increase of 
the Negro population of South Carolina, Calhoun, 
himself, furnished something of an argument 
against the “best substratum” by his declaration 
only nine years after its discovery: 

“We know what we are about, we foresee what is coming, 
and move with no other purpose but to protect our portion 
of the Union from the greatest of calamities—not insurrec- 
tion but something worse. I see the end if the process is to 
go on unresisted; it is to expel in time the white population 
of the Southern States and leave the blacks in possession.’’6® 

If this is a true picture of conditions in 1847, as 
black as we may consider the Abolitionists of that 
day, one thing is evident, and that is, that without 
such a mass of “the best substratum of population” 
to work upon, the Abolitionists could not possibly 
have effected what Calhoun feared: therefore, the 
statesmanship of William Smith, McDuffie, and Cal- 
houn, which had favored and assisted in the gather- 
ing of it, to that extent was inferior to the states- 
manship of Paul Hamilton, Barnwell, Alston and 


S8Statutes of S. C. Vol. XI, p. 279. 
®Pinckney: Life of Calhoun, p. 161. 


58 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Hayne which had attempted to arrest the growth. 
But that was not apparent to the South in 1850, and 
it is doubtful whether it would be very generally ad- 
mitted even today; for interest will color opinion . 
and Negro cheap labor is still the first consideration 
to many people in the South, just as European pau- 
per labor is to many in the North. Both North and 
South can see clearly the mote in their brother’s 
eye; but not the beam in their own eye. 

By the census of 1850, the population of the 33 
States, which constituted the Union, summed up 
22,969,603 persons, divided as follows: In the 19 
Free States 13,230,231 whites; 213,346 free persons 
of color; 2,536 slaves. In the 14 Slave States there 
were: 6,113,068 whites; 210,085 free persons of 
color; 3,200,590 slaves. That meant that the South 
had invested in that species of property interest 
$1,280,200,000. By money values and population, 
at that time, that was an immense sum. 

The Democratic Review, in this same year, pub- 
lished an article which was republished in the 
Charleston Mercury, and commended by that paper. 
This article sets forth certain distinct claims of con- 
siderable interest: 

met that: 


“The face of affairs is entirely changed since General 
Pinckney, in convention assented to the proposition giving 
Congress the right to pass laws, regulating commerce by a 
simple majority, on the ground that it was a boon granted 
the North in consideration of the necessity which the weak 
South had for the strong North as a neighbor. The cotton 
trade then scarcely existed, but the material has since been 


59 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


spun into a web which binds the commercial world to South- 
ern interests.’ 


Figures were also introduced to show that the 
multiplication of free blacks in the Slave States was 
increasing upon the proportion of slaves and that it 
was observable that they did not emigrate from the 
Slave States, where it was claimed they must in 
time supplant the slaves as servants; and the laws 
of Ohio were pointed to as indicating an opposition, 
not to slavery, but to the presence of the Negro, 
which it claimed, had greatly retarded emancipa- 
tion. In these claims truth was mingled with error. 

As to the indisposition of the people of Massachu- 
setts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, to 
admit any class of colored persons to enter as resi- 
dents, there can be no doubt up to this date, although 
indications of a change of sentiment were appear- 
ing. The repeal of the Black Laws of Ohio was one 
illustration. With 1,955,059 whites to only 25,279 
colored persons, the harsh provisions, which closed 
the mouths of these unfortunates when contending 
with the whites, in so called courts of justice, it was 
conceded by the whites of Ohio, could be safely done 
away with, and they had been repealed in 1848. 
It may also have been true that the free blacks did 
not emigrate from the Slave States; but that in that 
region they were gaining upon the slaves, and that 
there was any reasonable possibility of their sup- 
planting them as servants, does not seem to be borne 
out by examination of the census. 

"oO huplestoe: Mercury, Feb. 15, 1850. 
60 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The Democratic Review claims that, while in 1800 
there were in the Slave States 61,441 free persons 
of color to 73,100 in the Free States, that by 1830 
the proportions were 182,070 in the Slave States to - 
137,525 in the Free States, a proportion raised by 
1840 to 215,568 to 172,509. But this seems inexact. 
By the census of 1800 there were in the Slave States 
52,188 free persons of color, to 55,464 in the Free 
States, and by 1830 the number in the Slave States 
had, it is true, surpassed the number in the Free 
States, such being respectively 160,063 to 153,384. 
But whether it was in consequence of the Nat Turner 
insurrection of 1831, or the Abolition ebullition of 
1835, by 1840 there was a change in progress, the 
proportion being in that year 190,285 in the Slave 
States to 187,647 in the Free States, which, as has 
before been shown, by 1850 had changed to 210,085 
in the Slave States to 213,346 in the Free States. 

At the same time it could be noted that while the 
Negroes in the United States had increased by 
more than 28 per cent since 1840, the freedmen had 
increased by less than 13 per cent in the same time. 

In the Free States of New York, New Hampshire, 
Vermont and Connecticut the free colored popula- 
tion had decreased by 1,402. In the Slave States 
of Louisiana and Mississippi it had decreased by 
8,174, and that State in the South which held more 
than one-fourth of the whole number in the Southern 
States, Virginia, had appropriated $30,000 a year 
for their removal.” 

Ibid, 
61 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The South was apparently, therefore, committed 
to the institution of African Slavery, and in defense 
of it some of its champions were wild enough to 
waive the question of the inferiority of the Negro 
race and contend, “that slavery, whether of black 
or white, is a normal, proper institution in society.” 

The Richmond, Va., Inquirer, The Muscogee, Ala., 
Herald, The New Orleans, La., Delta and the 
Charleston, S. C., Standard, are all quoted by an 
English writer, whose work appeared in print 
about 1855.77 The three first as sustaining the 
above extraordinary claim; while the fourth called 
for a revival of the Slave Trade. 

Even if correctly quoted the comments of these 
papers do not establish the prevailing sentiment in 
the South at that time; for the publication at 
Charleston and reception of Dr. John Bachman’s 
work on the “Unity of the Human Race” would to 
some extent constitute an opinion to the contrary. 

But that the South was positively, unreservedly, 
and even aggressively committed to the institution 
of African Slavery is indisputable. 

It had not been so always. The change began in 
1833, when the Charleston Mercury declared—“The 
institution of slavery is not an evil but a benefit.” 
That paper had upon that occasion admitted that 
in the past the South had entertained a view to the 
contrary; but asserted in 1833, that even in Virginia 
and North Carolina: 


“Chambers: American Slavery & Color, p. 1. 
73Ibid, pp. 1-2. 


62 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“The great mass of the South sanction no such 
admission, that Southern Slavery is an evil to be 
deprecated.’’™* 


And, as the appetite grows by what it feeds upon, 
in 1855, The Richmond Examiner was quoted as 
declaring : 


“It is all a hallucination that we are ever going to get 
rid of African Slavery, or that it will ever be desirable to 
do so... True philanthropy to the Negro begins at 
home; and if every Southern man would act as if the canopy 
of Heaven were inscribed with a covenant in letters of fire, 
that the Negro is here and here forever; is our property 
and ours forever; is never to be emancipated; is to be kept 
hard at work and in rigid subjection all his days; and is 
never to go to Africa, to Polynesia, or to Yankee land,—far 
worse than either,—they would accomplish more good for 
the race in five years than they boast the institution itself 
to have accomplished in two centuries.’’75 


Yet as extreme as the above is, it is quite probable 
that the extravagance and injustice of the declara- 
tion against slavery in the Southern States, had ex- 
asperated those supporting it to utterances as ex- 
travagant. 

In the opening of the year 1850 a resolution of the 
Legislature of Vermont was introduced in Congress 
which recited: 


“That slavery is a crime against humanity, and a sore 
evil in the body politic, that was excused by the framers 
of the Federal Constitution as a crime entailed upon the 
country by their predecessors, and tolerated solely as a 
thing of inexorable necessity.’’7¢ 


“Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 366. 
Chambers; American Slavery & Color, p. 7. 
Charleston Mercury, Jan. 12, 1850. 


63 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


How Southern men must have felt this it is almost 
impossible for us to appreciate today. It was not 
only an indictment of the South at a bar where there 
was no provision for a trial; but it ended in a hypo- 
critical falsehood; for slavery had not been, “tol- 
erated solely as a thing of inexorable necessity.” 
Existing in every State except Massachusetts, the 
question whether the existing condition could be 
affected by permission to increase the slaves for a 
period by importation was committed with the 
clauses relating to taxes on exports and to a Naviga- 
tion Act,” that these things might “form a bargain 
between the Northern and Southern States.” 

This motion by Gouverneur Morris, of Pennsyl- 
vania, was adopted by the vote of seven of the eleven 
States in Convention, against three opposing and 
one abstaining from voting, one of the delegates 
whereof seconded the motion of Pinckney to increase 
the period permitting importation, which he with one 
of the opponents of commitment voted for; so that 
actually slavery, with the right to increase it by the 
Slave Trade, was voted for by nine out of eleven 
States participating. 

The Vermont resolution accomplished nothing; 
but to no individual in Congress could it have in- 
flicted such a wound as it dealt to Calhoun. To him 
resolutions were of enormous importance, and yet 
he never seemed quite ready to follow them up 
with acts. He was at last in the grasp of that 
power which overcomes all things except God. 
Twelve years had elapsed since he had been called 
upon to decide between the policy of Hayne, based 


64 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


upon the effort to bind together in close commercial 
intercourse the leading Western and Southern States, 
by a railroad from Ohio to South Carolina, and the 
resolution of Rhett, to amend the Constitution or. 
dissolve the Union. 

To neither could he agree. For Hayne’s connec- 
tion with Ohio through North Carolina, he substi- 
tuted a connection with Arkansas through Georgia. 


To the warning of his closest intimate that it was 
“better to part peaceably than to live in the state 
of indecision we do,” he could only reply with the 
vague allusion to: 


“The many bleeding pores which must be taken up in 
passing the knife through a body politic, in order to make 
two of one, which had been so long bound together by so 
many ties, political, social and commercial.”77 


In this declaration there is unmistakably intense 
feeling for the Union; but also some indecision; for 
what could have been a more practical application 
of Calhoun’s teaching than Rhett’s amendment to 
Slade’s bill to abolish slavery in the District of Co- 
lumbia? That was a resolution upon which some 
strong action could be erected. Twelve years had 
passed, nothing had been done, and now came the 
resolution of the Vermont Legislature. In the first 
shock which it gave him, Calhoun was unjust to his 
own following. He said: 


“Mr. President, I intended not to say a word on this sub- 
ject ...I have long labored faithfully to repress the en- 
croachments of the North, at the commencement I saw where 
it would end and must end; and I despair of ever seeing it 


™Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 391. 


65 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ended in Congress. It will go to its end, for gentlemen 
have already yielded to the current of the North which they 
admit they cannot resist, Sir, what the South will do is not 
for me to say. They will meet it, in my opinion, as it ought 
to be met.’’78 


A month later he reviewed the political situation 
in a most elaborate and searching analysis, his last 
great speech, read for him by Senator Mason, of 
Virginia. ‘‘How Can the Union be Preserved?” In 
endeavoring to give an “answer to this great ques- 
tion,” he asserted that the discontent of the South 
was due to the fact that political power had been 
taken from that section and transferred to the 
North, not through natural causes, but by legisla- 
tion which could be classed under three heads, the 
first of which was exclusion from common territory ; 
second a system of revenue under which an undue 
portion of the burden of taxation had been imposed 
upon the South, and the proceeds appropriated to 
the North; third a system of measures changing 
the original character of the government. The re- 
sult, he claimed, had been a change from a Consti- 
tutional Federal Republic to the despotism of a 
numerical majority in which a question of vital 
importance to the minority was threatened: 

“The relation between the races in the Southern section 

. which cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two 
races to the greatest calamity, and the section to poverty, 
desolation and wretchedness.’’79 

Whether right or wrong, the first of these claims 
had been settled by the Missouri Compromise in 


Charleston Mercury, Jan. 12, 1850. 
7Pinckney; Life of Oalhoun, pp. 167-181. 


66 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


1820, which the South had acquiesced in. The 
second Calhoun, himself, had undertaken to right 
in 1832, and if there had been a failure it was due 
in some measure to his inability to diagnose with. 
sufficient accuracy the situation at that time. 

Along two lines from 1827 there had proceeded the 
effort of the South to recover her power and in- 
crease her population; to restore her waning poli- 
tical influence and rebuild her commercial strength. 
One was through revision of the tariff, the other 
through internal improvement by means of railroad 
development. The first, despite all the interest it 
attracted and the splendid forensic display it gave 
rise to, not only was a lamentable failure in its 
curative effect, but very probably added somewhat 
to the difficulties which hampered the other. Now 
with regard to the first, Calhoun had mapped out the 
plan, and undertook the responsibility through the 
nullification project, with which he effected the 
relegation of Hayne to the post of Governor of the 
State of South Carolina from the United States 
Senate, to which he, himself, repaired with almost 
ambassadorial powers. The effect of Nullification 
on the Tariff should be analysed before considering 
the railroad campaign, with which Calhoun could 
not refrain from interfering, with results most dis- 
appointing to those he induced to accept his view 
and abandon that of his faithful friend and quondam 
supporter, made by the Knoxville Convention of 
1836, much more thoroughly the commercial leader 
of the South than Calhoun had ever been made its 
political guide. 


67 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Mr. John B. Cleveland says in his pamphlet on the 
“Controversy between John C. Calhoun and Robert 
Y. Hayne: 

“There can be no question as to the sincerity of purpose or 
integrity of character of Mr. Calhoun. At the same time 
as the common saying is ‘he was set in his ideas’ and he 
could not bear opposition.’’8° 


Upon many questions he could change and did 
change his views, but these changes all seem to have 
proceeded from a certain development of the man 
himself, not from any contact with others. So 
confident was he of his own powers that he could 
never profit by the realization of his mistakes. If 
in one of the greatest eulogies ever delivered by a 
great follower over a great leader, it could be as- 
serted that: 


“It is due to truth, to history and to him, to declare that 
he assisted powerfully in giving currency to opinions and 
building up systems that have proved seriously injurious 
to the South and probably to the stability of the existing 
Union.”81— 


a critical investigation of Calhoun’s failure in 
the revision of the tariff may not be without in- 
struction; for it was for the purpose of securing a 
proper framing of such that Nullification was 


launched. Later we may consider the railroad. 
SCleveland; Controversy between Calhoun & Hayne p. 7. 


Si\Hammond; Oration on Calhoun, Press of Walker & James 1850, OC. L. 
S. Vol, XV_p. 28. 


68 


CHAPTER V 


The Nullification episode has been generally 
treated as a struggle between Jackson and Calhoun. 
In its outward manifestations it was a contest be- 
tween the President and the State of South Carolina; 
but in the settlement it really was a struggle be- 
tween Calhoun and Clay. 

The position of Henry Clay, in 1833, was one to 
test to the utmost the powers of that great politician. 
In the preceding year he had sternly refused Hayne’s 
amendment to his tariff bill, enacting his own view 
coupled with a threat of enforcement. He had, how- 
ever, seen his Act nullified by the State of South 
Carolina, under the governorship of Hayne, and 
himself beaten overwhelmingly for the presidency 
by Jackson, who, while threatening coercion in 
South Carolina, had nevertheless, made Hayne’s 
amendment to the tariff the basis of his own recom- 
mendation on that subject to Congress. A bill had 
been introduced in the House, to restore the duties 
to the scale of 1816. What could Clay do to redeem 
himself and his cause? Back to the Senate, in 
Hayne’s vacant seat, was Clay’s “old companion at 
arms with a practical power of attorney from the 
recalcitrant State.’’®? 

Clay at once entered into negotiations with Cal- 
houn himself, introducing a bill in the Senate, to 
the two principles of which, viz., “that time should 
be given the manufacturers and that an ad valorem 
duty should be provided for’, Calhoun assented 
" Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 348. 

69 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


and the bill was referred to a select committee con- 
sisting of: Clay, Clayton, Calhoun, Grundy, Web- 
ster, Rives, and Dallas. 

Then up came the Revenue Collection Bill, sup- 
ported by thirty-two Senators, and passed with only 
seven besides Calhoun opposing, and the great poli- 
tician from Kentucky had Calhoun safely tangled 
in his net. Against the protest of the latter, he 
amended his tariff bill with a provision that in the 
valuation of imported articles, ‘“‘the valuation should 
be at the port in which the goods were imported.” 
Calhoun argued that this would be a great injus- 
tice to the South, as the price of goods being cheaper 
in the Northern than in the Southern cities, a home 
valuation would give the former a preference.® 
But that was exactly what Clay had proposed, and 
was determined to do, and although Webster and 
Silsbee of Massachusetts, Hill of New Hampshire, 
Dallas of Pennsylvania and Kane and Benton of Mis- 
souri came to Calhoun’s support, Calhoun fearing 
evidently to wreck his compromise with Clay, yielded 
this vital point. To consider all that was involved 
in the surrender of Calhoun, it will be necessary to 
revert to the past and to consider some political 
views emanating from the mightiest intellect South 
Carolina ever produced. : 

Prior to the framing of the Constitution of the 
United States and subsequent to the peace between 
Great Britain and the States, the value of the im- 
ports from Gréat Britain to America had exceeded 
the value of the exports from America to Great Bri- 
" SIbid. p. 849. 


70 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


tain to such an amount as to be nearly three times 
as great; while the commerce between the two coun- 
tries was very nearly ten times as great as that be- 
tween the States and the rest of the world. This. 
condition had produced anything but prosperity for 
America. 

The statesman who had contributed most to the 
framing of the Constitution, Charles Pinckney, in 
his effort to secure its ratification by his own State, 
had made among other things this remarkable state- 
ment: 

“‘RMoreign Trade’ is one of the enemies against which we 
must be extremely guarded, more so than against any 
other, as none will ever have a more unfavorable operation. 
I consider it as the root of our present public distress, as 
the plentiful source from which our future national calami- 
ties will flow, unless great care is taken to prevent it.’’84 

Thirty years later he warned Congress along simi- 
lar lines, ‘‘that a country mainly agricultural and 
without mines of the precious metals, could not have 
its imports greatly in excess of its exports, without 
financial disaster.’’®® 

From the time of the Union to the first embargo 
and the war of 1812, the immense preponderance of 
the value of imports had been greatly reduced from 
nearly treble to an excess of but twenty-five per 
cent; but in the two years which followed the peace 
they had increased to almost double the value of the 
exports. Under Lowndes’s tariff of 1816 they again 
fell to an excess of only about twenty per cent by 
1821.8 


STbid. p. 22. 
STbid. p. 502 
Census, U. S. 1850, p. 185. 


71 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


From that period until the Compromise of 1833, 
they still further fell to an excess of about eight 
per cent; the value of the exports for these twelve 
years being $934,287,320, and that of the imports 
$1,007,853,830, a total excess of value for imports 
in the twelve years amounting to $73,566,502. 

Considering the States through which this com- 
merce moved, we find, with regard to Massachusetts, 
for this period, the value of exports, $125,378,462; 
imports, $182,861,825. Pennsylvania, exports, $86,- 
062,157; imports, $139,891,027. Maryland, exports, 
$53,048,048; imports, $56,860,616. New York, ex- 
ports, $267,371,444; imports, $473,671,3882. An ex- 
cess of imports at Northern ports of the value of 
$321,000,000. 

Now taking the Southern States for the same 
period, we find Virginia, exports, $47,535,525; im- 
ports, $7,093,499. South Carolina, exports, $93,018,- 
377; imports, $20,625,049. Georgia, exports, $56,- 
167,842; imports $5,828,581. Alabama, exports, 
$14,897,425; imports, $1,631,343. Louisiana, ex- 
ports, $138,670,081; imports, $68,321,568. An ex- 
cess of exports amounting to $247,000,000.*" 

While, therefore, a great amount of money from 
the South may have been expended for Northern 
manufactures, a great deal also went out for im- 
portation of goods through Northern markets. 

The revision of the tariff was to correct both 
wrongs. 

But the result was simply that in a period half 
as long, six years, the excess of the value of im- 
” SIbid. p. 185. 


72 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ports over exports for the whole country doubled and 
this without any appreciable gain in the exports of 
Virginia and but a slight gain, considering the 
agitation, for South Carolina; or totally a condition: 
which, with even the greater gain of Georgia, still 
left the South Atlantic States in both import and 
export trade far behind the Gulf States, more 
rapidly developing, and fed by the great waterway 
of the Mississippi. 

But it was when taking up for consideration the 
condition of the Northern States after 1833 that 
the absolute ineffectiveness of the revision of the 
tariff, at that time, to cure the wrongs of trade was 
most glaringly exhibited. Even with a declining 
export, Massachusetts, in the six years brought in 
goods to the amount of the value she had imported 
in the previous twelve, and with those of Mary- 
land, exceeded those of the Gulf ports. The trade 
of Pennsylvania was indeed crippled. But while 
the exports of New York fell behind those of Loui- 
siana, in the value of import goods in the six years, 
the importation of the previous twelve were ex- 
ceeded. The revision of the tariff in 1833 had not 
only not got at the root of the trouble, it had ap- 
parently aggravated it; for it had while injuring 
Pennsylvania, stimulated Massachusetts, New York 
and Maryland to make on importation what they had 
lost on manufactures; while, in place of the money 
so expended remaining in circulation in the United 
States, a great volume of it must have gone abroad. 
The panic of 1837, which came in the spring, and 
which followed the greatest of New York’s im- 


73 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


portations, a figure not attained again in fourteen 
years of increasing population, had its origin in 
New York. It did much to cramp the Southern rail- 
road movement of that date; but neither it nor the 
panic of 1839 did as much to ham-string Southern 
effort as the divided councils and unfortunate rival- 
ries of South Carolina and Georgia and Hayne and 
Calhoun. 

It might have been unreasonable to have expected 
Georgians to have assisted a road to the West to 
pass through North Carolina from Charleston, to 
the neglect of their own State, and they had every 
right to start their “rival system,” as an apologist 
styles it; but for South Carolinians to abandon what 
was under way in their own State backed by North 
Carolina and Tennessee, however weakly, and to 
pour their money into Georgia, when at the very 
threshold there was refusal to permit the bridging 
of the Savannah river for them, was the very ex- 
tremity of folly, no matter by whom advocated, and 
for writers of history to characterize as a bubble 
and fiasco the great scheme launched by the Knox- 
ville Convention in 1836, is simply to indicate a 
lack of understanding of all that was involved in 
that undertaking, and to resolutely shut eyes to the 
nature of the obstructions which blocked its pro- 
gress at the time it was most essential to push it 
most determinedly. 

As it was by the railroads that the Slavery Ques- 
tion was eventually settled, it is interesting to note 
that the first intelligent move towards railroad con- 
struction in the United States was contemporaneous 


74 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


with the great speech of Robert Y. Hayne in the 
United States Senate in 1827 on the Negro Ques- 
tion. Some evidence has been adduced to indicate 
the probability of his responsibility for the first 
suggestion of a railroad to be operated by steam 
power, in the United States, in 1821 to run from 
Charleston to Augusta, with a fork to Columbia.*® 
While Hayne may have been this early suggester, 
it is quite possible and not all improbable that the 
suggester, “H’’, might have been Elias Horry. But 
Six years later, when the movement took definite 
shape, Hayne in the United States Senate made an 
utterance, which may be considered as, at that time, 
representing the view of his section concerning the 
Negro Question, viz., that: 


“The history of the country has proved that where the 
relative proportion of the colored population to the white 
was greatly diminished, slaves ceased to be valuable and 
emancipation followed of course ... wherever free labor 
was put into full and successful operation, slave labor 
ceased to be valuable.’ 


“Time and patience,” he had then contended, were 
alone necessary to solve the Negro Problem. But 
Nullification in 1832 and the Abolition ebullition of 
of 1835 had, however, later affected the sections 
profoundly and from this latter date the political 
history of the Republic depended more and more 
upon the influences which could be brought to bear 
upon the West by the South and the North, and upon 
the South and the North by the West. Every in- 
fluence which contributed to homogeniety was an 


sJervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 122. 
Tbid. p. 208. 


75 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


influence towards peaceful development. That the 
Hayne of 1835 was, ipsissimus verbis, the Hayne of 
1827 cannot be claimed; but to no statesman in the 
Union was the necessity more apparent for the pro- 
motion of this homogeniety than to him to whom 
had been confided by the representatives of nine 
States the stupendous task of pushing the great 
Western railroad from Charleston to Cincinnati, the 
front door of the great West for “free social and 
commercial intercourse,’’®® with: 

“Reciprocal dependence from Michigan to Florida, by es- 
tablishing connections in business, promoting friendships, 
abolishing prejudices, creating greater uniformity in polit- 
ical opinions and blending the feeling of distant portions 
of the country into a union of heart.’ 


The “rival system,” in favor of which Calhoun 
abandoned Hayne’s railroad in 1838, was not in all 
probability originally designed for but eventually 
became the vehicle of a scheme of political conquest, 
which aimed at an approach to the back door of the 
West through the new State of Arkansas. This 
statement may be received with impatience, but ex- 
amination will show its truth. 

The Charleston and Hamburg Railroad was char- 
tered in 1828, and by 1831 was making fair progress. 
There must have been in contemplation at that date, 
the original plan of the fork to Columbia, and a 
continuation West, through North Carolina and Ten- 
nessee; for the first projector in Georgia, James A. 
Merriwether, mentions it in a letter to Elias Horry 


Ibid. p. 458. 
“Ibid. p. 401. 


76 


LIBRARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 





GQ3aLoO3aroud “ Sr oy 


GQSALATGINOD SAM TITY sesssssrsaseerones 


S30Y9RN 


SAHOV1E 8B SALIHM 


SALIHM 





O€Ssl sn 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of date June 8th, 1831.°° In answer Elias Horry 
advises him distinctly that the company desires ‘‘the 
completion of a railroad, if possible, by way of the 
Saluda Gap,” but sees the importance of the one 
across Georgia, and advises that connection be made 
with Savannah, which should reap some of the ad- 
vantages which she is entitled to.’ 3 

In the very year in which Calhoun was advising 
the people :— 
“if all other effectual resistance should fail, it would be 
their duty to take measures to concentrate the voice of the 
South, which should plainly announce to their Northern 


brethren that either the Bill (Force) or the political connec- 
tion must yield:—’’4 

in his report on the completion of the Charleston 
and Hamburg Railroad in 18338, Elias Horry alludes 
to the ‘‘Western and Atlantic Railroad Convention” 
held in Asheville, North Carolina, September 3rd, 
1832, for a “Railroad up the French Broad River,” 
at which were pointed out the many and great ad- 
vantages that would be produced ... not less ina 
political than in a commercial point of view, so 
indissolubly connecting the Southern and Western 
interests, strengthening the bonds of union and 
thereby perpetuating all the blessings of our valu- 
able institutions.” 

But with the death of Horry in 1834, the project 
seems to have slumbered until, in October, 1835, a 
well thought out statement, emanating from a group 

Piece, la ra al 1833, Address by Horry p. 381. 

“Charleston Mercury, November 25, 1833. 

%A. E. Miller, Pub. 1838, Address by Horry, p. 21. 


77 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of citizens of Ohio, one of whom was General Har- 
rison, brought the matter up again,®® and on July 
4th, 1836, delegates from Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, 
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama and Tennessee, at Knoxville, launched the 
Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad to 
connect the West and South. Hayne became Presi- 
dent of the company and Calhoun a Director. From 
the outset, however, Calhoun was a continually dis- 
turbing element. He was never able to shake off 
the view that railroads, if not adjuncts to water 
courses, would be failures. It was a natural view 
in his day, if it was an ignorant one, and one hon- 
estly held; but it was injurious to the enterprise. 


His known distrust of the route through North 
Carolina chilled the enthusiasm of the people of 
North Carolina.*? He deserted the South Carolina 
Company at the most critical time, when the pros- 
pects of the rival enterprise through Georgia seemed 
fairest. His powerful obstructive force arrested 
the Carolina road at Columbia, by a declaration per- 
tinaciously sought to be made in advance that it 
should not go further®® and by so doing diverted to 
the “rival system” in Georgia, funds in South Caro- 
lina which most materially aided in preserving the 
Georgia venture from utter failure, when it had 
collapsed, with unaccounted funds, to the extent of 
$2,602,457,26 ;°® while his sadly triumphant designa- 
tion of Hayne’s road as an ended “humbug,” one 
W oegh atlanton wouter, Asie 8, 18385. 

Ibid, Dec. 18, 183 

Charleston Mercury, Avg. 16, 1 aes Belt, p. 316. 


78 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


year after Hayne’s death, when it was at last de- 
termined that it should not go beyond Columbia, 
has been accepted at its face value by those more in- 
clined to believe it, than to take the trouble to ex- 
amine the facts. 


Yet Calhoun, himself, although he survived Hayne 
eleven years, died before the “rival system” was 
assured; and nine years after his own death, when, 
as yet, no great benefits to South Carolina trade 
had accrued from the construction of the Georgia 
road, a vigorous attempt was made to resurrect the 
French Broad route, with a declaration that only 
the gap from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to Paint 
Rock, on the Tennessee-North Carolina line, re- 
mained to be closed, C. G. Memminger, in opposing 
the resurrection of the L. C. & C. R. R., made the 
statement concerning it, that “‘it had been the mother 
of all our interior railroads, and had not cost the 
State a dollar of her money.’’?° 

If such a statement could be made in 1858 by one 
who, while he had materially assisted it up to 18389, 
had then opposed it, it may be well to consider how 
the scheme was regarded in Europe, at the date at 
which Mr. Memminger led the movement for the 
stopping it at Columbia, evidently so as to concen- 
trate all effort on the route through Georgia. 

In the work of Alexander Trotter, of London, 
England, published in 1839, appears three allusions 
to Hayne’s Western road. One in the general dis- 
cussion of conditions in the United States at large; 
one in the chapter treating of the State of South 

10W. E. Cog. Pub. Address Memminger, Vol. XXI Pam. C. L. S. p. 9. 

79 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Carolina; and one in that discussing Ohio. The 
first is as follows: 


“Besides the outlet for their produce which the Ohio 
and Mississippi afford to cultivators, the State of Penn- 
sylvania has established a communication on the former 
river by a series of canals and railroads, and has opened 
to them the market of the Atlantic cities. The State of 
New York, by means of the Erie Canal, has procured for 
them a similar advantage at a port more to the North, while 
a still more gigantic undertaking than either of these works 
is now in progress to connect the city of Cincinnati with 
Charleston, which will bring the products of these distant 
lands to the markets of the Southern Atlantic States,’’101 


In that portion of his work which treats of South 
Carolina, Mr. Trotter enters more particularly into 
the plan of the connection: 


“The work contemplated by this company (The Louis- 
ville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad) is the establish- 
ment of a railroad communication between the city of Char- 
leston and the Ohio. The distance between Charleston and 
Cincinnati in a straight line, is about five hundred miles. 
Several routes have been surveyed by which the length of 
the railroad will be about six hundred, but no line seems 
to have been definitely fixed upon. A railroad called the 
South Carolina, already exists between Charleston and Ham- 
burg, a town situated on the Savannah opposite to Augusta, 
in Georgia, this railroad has been purchased by the com- 
pany, and will be made use of as far as Branchville or 
Aiken. One plan is to carry the road projected from the 
former to Columbia, the seat of Government in South Caro- 
lina, and then up the valley of the Broad river into the 
State of North Carolina. After surmounting the Blue Ridge 
by inclined planes with stationary engines, the road would 
by this plan, be carried down the valley of the French Broad 
River to Knoxville, in Tennessee, and thence through Cum- 


1°Trotter: Finances, North American States, p. 61. 


80 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


berland Gap, to Lexington in Kentucky; from the latter city 
separate roads would proceed to Louisville, Cincinnati and 
Mayesville. The distance from Charleston to Cincinnati by 
this route would be 607 miles.’ 


Alluding to the Georgia route, he indicates the 
first as likely the route to be decided upon finally, 
and in the remarkably accurate map, for that date, 
shows that the line through North Carolina, is 
shorter by something like a fifth of the distance and 
that “the success of the South Carolina Railroad 
holds out a fair prospect for that of the greater 
work” as it— 


“although thus successful had to contend with great dis- 
advantages; it was not only the first railroad attempted in 
the Southern States, but was at the time it was completed 
the longest railroad that had been constructed in any part 
of the world ...so that the projectors could derive little 
benefit from the experience of other works of a similar nature 
—the whole work too, which is a singular circumstance, 
was executed by the black population. In addition to these 
drawbacks, the limited means of the company caused the 
work to be executed in a very imperfect manner. ... The 
original cost of the road was $904,500.00 but the filling up 
of the spaces between the piles and other expenses increased 
the cost up to the 31st of October 1834 to $1,836,615.09. 
The present company have almost reconstructed the whole 
work; two-thirds of the purchase money which has been paid, 
together with the expenses which have already been incurred, 
having amounted to nearly two million of dollars.1°3 


Georgia had started its system from a point after- 
wards becoming Atlanta, towards which two roads 
were pointing, one from Augusta about due west 


12Tbid. p. 223. 
W3Ibid. p. 226. 


81 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


and another from Savannah northwest to Macon, 
from which by an inclination north it moved towards 
the same point. 

Hayne’s review of the commercial situation in the 
spring of 1838 indicated how clearly he grasped the 
fact that the revision of the tariff had failed to cure 
the conditions under which the South labored; for 
exporting more than a sixth of the total exports of 
the country, the three States of Virginia, South 
Carolina and Georgia imported less than one for- 
tieth. If the South could only have been made to 
see it before the opportunity passed. His comment 
put it fairly: 

“Look at the present course of trade between the South 
and the West. The importations from Tennessee and Ken- 
tucky into South Carolina and Georgia amount to millions 
of dollars, but instead of their being paid for in foreign 
goods imported directly into Charleston and Savannah in 
exchange for our own cotton and rice, we pay for them in 
gold or silver or in bills upon the North, thereby losing 
entirely the profits on the importation and greatly embar- 
rassing our merchants by the operation. Now if we only 
had the means of transporting these goods by railroad to the 
West, everything would be changed. Not only would we pay 
for Western production consumed by the South, in foreign 
goods received in exchange for our own produce, but we 
should be able to supply a large portion of the Western 
-country with all the goods now obtained by them from 
abroad, receiving in exchange their products to be distrib- 
uted in Southern ships throughout the world. The truth 
is that all our efforts to establish a direct trade with Europe 
must in a great measure be unavailing unless we can provide 
a market in the West for the goods we may import. Our 
railroad with the aid of the South Western Railroad Bank, 
will achieve for us this important and peaceful victory.’’1%4 


1%Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 457. 
82 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


But Kentucky and Tennessee did not constitute 
all that the railroad to Cincinnati led to. The de- 
scription given by the English student of American 
affairs in 1839, shows what Ohio was at that date: 


“Of the 75 counties of which it is composed, 14 lie upon 
the Ohio River, which in its windings bounds the State for 
436 miles; while seven which border on Lake Erie possess 
a coast of upwards of 200 miles in extent. The great works 
which have been described, and others the result of private 
enterprise, have given almost equal advantage to the interior 
districts. Canals now made or making pass through 32 
counties, railroads through six, and macadamized roads 
through five, so that of the 75 counties into which the State 
is divided, there are only 11 which do not benefit from 
either natural or improved means of communication, and 
many even of these are traversed or bounded by rivers of 
inferior magnitude. While its natural advantages and the 
industry of its inhabitants have thus secured for this State 
the benefits of an easy internal communication, its position 
is no less favorable for external commerce. The Ohio River 
affords a direct communication with all the country in the 
valley of the Mississippi, which requires much of its agricul- 
tural produce and of its manufactures while by means of 
Lake Erie, which has several good natural or artificial har- 
bors, it communicates with Canada and New York on the 
one side and with the country of the upper lakes on the 
other ... When the communication is complete between the 
Ohio and Pennsylvania lines, and still more when the rail- 
road is finished which is meant to connect Cincinnati with 
Charleston, in South Carolina, an additional stimulus will 
be given to the industry of the State. The completion of the 
latter work, by the importance it will confer on Cincinnati, 
is scarcely of less interest to Ohio than it is to the States 
whose territories it traverses.’’105 


It was from Ohio in 1835 that the movement had 
come headed by General Harrison, for railroad con- 
1Trotter: Finances, North American States, p. 277. 
83 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


nection with South Carolina. We have discussed 
commercial conditions. What of political? Pro- 
fessor Paxson says: 


“The Southern counties of the old Northwest were never 
unanimous for slavery, but they were thoroughly impreg- 
nated with the ideals of the South before the Northern tier 
of counties had been surveyed or cleared of Indians. North 
of the National Road (from Wheeling to Columbus, Indian- 
apolis, Vandalia and St. Louis) roughly speaking, was the 
zone of the Erie Canal—by 1840 a new New England stood 
rival to a northern South within the three oldest States of 
the old Northwest. For another twenty years, from the 
election of Harrison to that of Lincoln, the political future 
of the section was indeterminate.’’106 


But in 1835 Calhoun had been convinced that the 
movement of population and industry was towards 
Arkansas,’*? and that consequently ‘‘we should look 
much further West than Cincinnati or Lexington’’.1° 
This he announced in his letter to Hayne resigning 
from his position as one of the directors of the 
Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad in 
1838. 

On what did he base the view? The Census 
figures of 1880 as compared with those of 1820 in- 
dicated that the increase of population of Indiana, 
Illinois, and Michigan, were all greater than the 
increase in Arkansas, even if the increase of Ohio’s 
581,295 to 937,903 was not as great a percentage of 
increase as that of Arkansas from 14,314, to 33,388 
in the same period. Nevertheless at the time when 
the road was determined to be stopped at Columbia, 


106Paxson, Early Railroads of the Old Northwest, p. 254. 
17Oharleston Courier, Nov. 9, 1835. 
1%Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, pp. 411-412. 


84 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


South Carolina, in favor of the movement to be 
worked out through Georgia to Arkansas, the white 
population of Ohio was 1,502,122, the colored 17,345. 
At the same date the white population of Arkansas 
was 77,174, the colored 20,865. If it be claimed that 
north of Arkansas was Missouri with a white popu- 
lation of 323,888 and a colored population of 61,388; 
yet, if we took the three States just north of Ken- 
tucky and across the Ohio River and the State of 
Michigan just beyond, we will know that the region 
which held 2,864,684 whites and’ 29,4838 colored 
was abandoned to build to a region inhabited by 
401,662 whites and 82,253 colored persons. Was 
this a reasonable commercial movement? If it was 
not, what was it? An attempt will be made to an- 
swer these two questions in the two following chap- 
ters, which attempt should open with some descrip- 
tion of railroad movement in the North and West. 


85 


CHAPTER VI 


Realizing what a great benefit the Erie Canal had 
been to New York, by 1834, Pennsylvania had con- 
nected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh by canals, the 
greater part of which had been completed by 18382 ;1°° 
but with the revision of the tariff of 1833, so in- 
jurious to her, as has been shown, she bent every 
effort to supplement her waterways with railroads, 
and, by 1835, there were some 200 miles of railroads 
in the State.1*° The bulk of these it is true were 
coal roads, but by 1839, a railroad had been com- 
pleted from Philadelphia to Columbia (Pa.) 82 miles 
in length, and there was in process of construction 
4134 miles additional in a southwestwardly direction 
to Gettysburg.™! Philadelphia also had a railroad 
connection with New York to the North and Balti- 
more to the South. 

In New York by 1836, railroad communication be- 
tween Albany and Utica was open for traffic,"*? and 
work was being pushed on the Erie railroad, start- 
ing from lower down on the Hudson towards Lake 
Erie. 

In Maryland, the Baltimore and Ohio, begun 
about the same time as the Charleston and Ham- 
burg, but, not as soon used for steam power opera- 
tion, had by 1834 reached Harper’s Ferry, 82 
miles.11* There it connected by a viaduct over the 
Potomac River, with the Winchester Railroad, which 
by 1839, ran down the Shenandoah Valley in Vir- 


19Trotter, Finances of the North American States p. 163. 
Hadley, Railroad Transportation, p. 33, et seq 

11Trotter, Finances North American States, Dp. 165. 

1122H adley, Railroad Transportation, p. 38, et seq. 

118Tyrotter, Finances North American States, DanLooe 


86 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ginia for 30 miles. A branch to Washington, some 
33 miles in length, connected with the Richmond and 
Potomac Railroad'"* 70 miles in length, opened for 
traffic in 1836.%° From Richmond, south, ran the 
Richmond and Petersburg Railroad, in process of 
construction, and from Petersburg to Blakely, in 
North Carolina, complete, by 1839, to Wilmington 
by 1840.17° 

By 1842 the New York Central reached Buffalo, 
while, at the same time, Boston linked up with 
Albany. 

The above vindicates the warning which Hayne 
issued to the people of South Carolina in 1835, 
upon the call from Ohio for Southern railroad con- 
nection, viz., that ““New York, Boston, Philadelphia 
and Baltimore were moving for what was offered 
Charleston.’!!7_ In 1838 he declared to the people of 
Charleston: 


“If after all we have said and done, we should falter 
in our course, our sister cities will very soon establish these 
connections, by which our doom will be sealed, and we shall 
deserve our fate.’’118 


To the people of South Carolina he said: 


“It is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that South 
Carolina is destined to sink down from her high and palmy 
state of prosperity ... unless her sons shall avail them- 
selves of the present favorable opportunity.’’119 


S4ibid. ps: 3L1. 

asi bid. p. 212. 

116Tbid. 

uiJervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 388. 
18Tbid. p. 459. 

29Courier, March 138th, 1838. 


87 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Six months later, when striving to induce Calhoun 
to reconsider his announced resignation from the 
Directorship of the L. C. & C. Co., he admitted: 


“Should your influence be thrown against us, our whole 
project in all its parts may fail.”— 


But he also warned him, with true prophetic 
power, that cooperation with those he was deserting 
was: “the only plan, be assured, by which ever your 
views can be affected.’’?*° Set and hardened in his 
views, Calhoun refused to be influenced by any argu- 
ment, threw his influence against the plan, and con- 
sidered the stopping of Hayne’s road at Columbia, 
one year after Hayne’s death, a personal triumph.1*4 
He thus destroyed the: plan of a connection with Cin- 
cinnati, to which from the outset he had been op- 
posed, although in veiled phrases,'?? on account of 
his determination to secure the combination of po- 
litical and commercial benefits, which he was con- 
vinced must flow from a railroad across Tennessee 
to Arkansas. It is true that at the time of his 
resignation from the Carolina enterprise, 2000 men 
were at work on the line from Atlanta to Chatta- 
nooga, and expectation keen that by the fall of 1839, 
one hundred of the 138 miles would be finished; but 
without a precise statement of account to indicate 
how the expenditure of $2,602,457.26 had been in- 
curred,’** this work was suspended in 1841, with- 
out even the laying of the iron; which suspension 
stopped as well the Georgia and the Georgia Central 
iT asopeppan i itobert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 477. 

121Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 464. 

122 Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 470. 

1223Phillips, Transportation in Eastern Cotton Belt, p. 316. 


88 


LIBRARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


qg3a1l93r°0u8d ecwaneuns nse 
GQSLATIGWOD SAVMAIW Ys Httrettereterter 


Ssa0OsgoSN 


SHWOV 1d 8B SALIHM 





Ovsl SN 





THE SLAVE TRADE 


with 88 and 95 miles respectively from Augusta and 
Savannah, with some sixty miles still intervening 
between their most extended work and the southern 
point in this link of their chain to the West. It also 
stopped work from Nashville down towards the 
Northern point at Chattanooga. The suspension 
occurred just two years after the death of Hayne, 
and but one after the persistent resolve to stop work 
on the South Carolina Road at Columbia and dissolve 
the relations between it and Tennessee and North 
Carolina had been affected. To those who had ef- 
fected this disastrous result it, therefore, became 
absolutely essential to push the Georgia road on to 
completion; which was effected by 1845. 


““New subscriptions from Charleston and Augusta 
to the stock of the company, it seems, were largely 
responsible for the hastening of the road to com- 
pletion” ;12* but what portion of the cost, $3,328,594, 
was borne by the contributors from South Carolina 
does not clearly appear. What is known, however, 
is that General Gadsden, who owed his elevation to 
the presidency of the South Carolina Railroad to 
the powerful assistance of Calhoun, contemporane- 
ously with the completion of the Georgia Railroad in 
1845, wrote to Calhoun urging him to attend the 
railroad convention to be held at Memphis the same 
year, declaring in his letter: 


“We are on the eve of realizing all our fond hopes and 
expectations of 1886 . . . Now is the time to meet our West- 
ern friends at Memphis—to set the ball in motion which 
will bring the valley to the South.’’125 
aba. p. Bae. 

125Jameson, Oalhoun’s Correspondence, p. 1062. 


89 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


From 1836 to 1838, Calhoun was a director in 
the South Carolina enterprise, Gadsden its most in- 
veterate foe.*® 


F. H. Elmore was more definite in his endorse- 
ment of the road to Memphis. He wrote Calhoun: 


“A railroad communication based at Memphis, in a slave 
region and extended direct to Charleston, passing through 
the most martial portion of our people, and who have, as at 
present situated, the least interest of all the South in slavery, 
would render their relations with us at Charleston and 
Memphis so intimate and advantageous that their interests 
and ours would be indissolubly united. They would be to 
us a source of strength, power and safety, and render the 
South invulnerable.”127 


Of course it was not only possible, but not at all 
improbable, that in pressing the original route along 
the line from Charleston to Cincinnati, free labor 
might have injured the institution of slavery in 
South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, even 
more than familiarity with it might have softened 
the feelings of the inhabitants of Ohio, Indiana and 
Illinois towards slavery. But whichever way it 
worked, it must have knit more firmly together the 
sections, by the identity of thought, which would 
have made itself felt with closer commercial inter- 
course. What Elmore hoped to sustain in 1845, 
Conner saw beginning to crumble in 1849, for he 
writes Calhoun at that date: 


“The cities all of them are becoming daily more and 
more unsound, and all for the same reason. The infusion 
of Northerners and foreigners amongst them. And their 


*6Courier, Dec. 18th, 1839. 
127Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 1060. 


90 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


interest is being felt in the interior. The draymen and 
laborers of New Orleans are all white and foreigners, and 
they will not let a Negro drive a dray. He would be mobbed 
or killed. The steamboats all employ white servants, and 
their captains are mostly Northerners, and the issue of Free 
Labor against Slave Labor will soon be made at the South. 
Our own people many of them are desponding. They begin 
to think that the institution of Slavery is doomed.’’128 


In the light of this letter in 1849, we may well 
ponder what might not have been accomplished for 
peace had not what might have become a great ar- 
tery of trade between Cincinnati and Charleston been 
so recklessly cut in 1840. It is hardly possible to 
doubt, that in the cutting, commercial conditions 
were made absolutely subservient to political in the 
cultivated growth concerning the Institution in 
which the disciples were continually forging ahead 
of the masters and teachers. 


In 1846 Calhoun had suggested, to J. H. Ham- 
mond, the propriety of eulogizing Rev. Henry Bas- 
comb for his vindication of the South on the occa- 
sion of the division of the Methodists, and Ham- 
mond had replied at some length with a declina- 
tion. Calhoun’s rejoinder is of some interest: 


“TI concur in the opinion that we ought to take the high- 
est ground on the subject of African Slavery, as it exists 
among us, and have from the first acted accordingly; but 
we must not break with or throw off those who are not pre- 
pared to come up to our standard, especially on the ex- 
terior limits of the slave holding States. I look back with 
pleasure to the progress which sound principles have made 
within the past ten years in respect to the relations between 
the two races. All, with a very few exceptions, defended it 


128Tpid. p. 1188. 
91 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


a short time since on the ground of a necessary evil to be 
got rid of as soon as possible. South Carolina was not 
much sounder 20 years ago than Kentucky now is and I 
cannot but think the course the Western Baptist and Metho- 
dists took in reference to the division of their churches 
has done much to expel C. Clay and correct public opinion 
in that quarter.’’129 


Now if we go back twenty years from this expres- 
sion of Calhoun’s, we will be within one year of the 
date of Hayne’s great speech in the United States 
Senate of 1827. In the twenty years, as well as 
can be arrived at, the whites had increased to the 
extent of about fifty per cent, the Negroes to the ex- 
tent of about sixty per cent. Apparently he had 
expected too much. The increase rate of the whites 
had not been as great as that of the Negroes, no 
matter what were the causes, and with the increase, 
the estimate of the Institution increased. In the 
light of these facts it is scarcely surprising that in 
1848, although railroads from Columbia to two 
points on the North Carolina line, were again under 
way, and an application for a charter for a third, 
along Hayne’s route to Spartanburg, pending, the 
City of Charleston was induced to give $500,000 to 
complete the railroad from Nashville to Chatta- 
nooga, in spite of the protest'** of some of the citi- 
zens of Charleston, that it was not right to use 
corporate funds for work outside of the State, and 
even if it was, it was not expedient to do so, as long 
as Augusta refused, as she was then refusing, to 
permit a bridge to be built across the Savannah 


122Tbid. p. 672. 
130Pamphlet, C. L. S. Vol. VIII. Art. 7, p. 6. 


92 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


River at the terminus of the Hamburg road, by 
which alone the South Carolina Railroad could con- 
nect with the Georgia system. 

Upon Calhoun’s return from the trip to the West 
which had been urged upon him by the president 
of the South Carolina Railroad, Gadsden, he ex- 
pressed himself to his son-in-law, Clemson, as satis- 
fied with his reception in Memphis and elsewhere; 
but he could hardly have been pleased at the tone 
taken by Gadsden very shortly after with regard to 
the tariff. 

Mention has previously been made with regard 
to what is herein considered Calhoun’s failure in 
1833 to cope successfully with Clay; but the very 
slight gains then secured were wiped out in a new 
tariff in 1842. In 1846, being free from the terrific 
responsibilities and overshadowing dangers of Null- 
ification, Calhoun secured legislation, which seems 
in its workings to have balanced very satisfactorily 
the imports and exports of the country, being ap- 
parently passed upon the sound principles of Lown- 
des’s legislation. But the effort drew from Gads- 
den’s swollen greatness, this insolent characteriza- 
tion of the main creator of it: 


“The passage of the tariff has pleased, but not satisfied 
us. Perhaps it was the best terms which at this crisis 
could be got, and doing away with the minimums and the 
ad valorem duty is a point gained. The valuation is am- 
biguous. Whether on the foreign or the home we cannot 
understand. The bill may be construed either way. The 
Pennsylvanians really seem to control you.’’31 


181Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 1085. 


93 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The conclusion must have been galling, and it was 
followed in 1847 with another letter in which, with 
professions of devotion, it was intimated that Gen- 
eral Taylor’s candidacy for the Presidency would 
be a serious impediment to the only kind of candida- 
cy Calhoun could undertake. Whether Mr. Gadsden 
received the early answer he requested on the ground 
“that the concert of action may be certain to secure 
the triumph of one, who will not court our influence 
to deceive,’’!*? does not appear; but the next year 
there was a strong movement, led by George A. 
Trenholm of Charleston, to oust Gadsden from the 
presidency of the railroad, and in the last two years 
of his life, Calhoun’s intimacy with Gadsden is not 
evidenced by any correspondence. Rather it was 
upon Hammond that he leant more and more and it 
was to him that he addressed the last letter written 
to any one beyond the immediate circle of his own 
hearthstone. 

To Hammond the dying statesman turned with a 
confidence calculated to inspire the latter’s belief in 
himself : 


“Without flattery I know of no one better informed than 
you are on the subject that now agitates the country, or 
more capable of deciding what should be done, with the 
knowledge you would acquire of the state of things here or 
of preparing whatever papers the Convention may think 
proper to put out. ... Never before has the South been 
placed in so trying a situation, nor can it ever be placed in 
one more so. Her all is at stake.’’133 


AST DIA.| Be Lses. 
aeT bids Ds) 1 ae. 


94 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The convention was the Nashville Convention of 
1850, which met a few months after Calhoun’s death. 
Hammond and many others hoped to have had Cal- 
houn’s advice at it, and possibly the suggestion for 
a new Constitution framed by Calhoun. They be- 
lieved emancipation was impending, and that with 
it the South would be reduced to the condition of 
Hayti. Hammond had declared to Calhoun: 


“We must act now and decisively. ... If we do not act 
now, we deliberately consign, not our posterity, but our 
children to the flames. What a holocaust for us to place 
upon the alter of that union for which the South and West 
have had such a bigoted and superstitious veneration.’ 134 


The brilliant follower had passed quite beyond 
his leader. The orator who eight years later de- 
fiantly declared in the United States Senate, “Cot- 
ton is King,” tersely states in this letter his political 
creed, viz., that: 


“The fundamental object of government is to secure the 
fruits of labor and skill—that is to say property, and that 
its forms must be moulded upon the social organizations. 
Life and liberty will then be secured, for these are naturally 
under the guardianship of society and that civilization which 
is the fruit of its progress. ‘Free government’ and all that 
sort of thing has been, I think, a fatal delusion and humbug 
from the time of Moses. Freedom does not spring from 
government, but from the same soil which produces govern- 
ment itself, and all that we want from that is a guarantee 
for property fairly acquired.’’135 


His conclusion was: “If leaders will only lead, 


neither they nor we have anything to fear.” 


W4Tbid. p. 1210. 
5.bid. p. 1210. 


95 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Property is said to be proverbially timid, and the 
powers of finance to dread war and its confusion; 
but Hammond’s conclusion was identical with that 
if the greatest banker of Charleston, of that day, 
who in the previous year had informed Calhoun 
after an extended journey, that the South was 
“ready to ace? 

With Calhoun’s death, however, the party of ac- 
tion was without any recognized head. There was 
no South Carolinian, who could in 1850 take his 
place without question, and accordingly by 1852, the 
leadership of the South passed to Georgia from 
South Carolina, and to some extent it did so pass 
from and through the blind efforts of the Titan of 
South Carolina to mould all things to his will; for 
it was through Calhoun to a considerable extent, 
that Georgia had secured and waxed fat upon the 
great railroad up into Tennessee and to the West. 
As soon as the Western and Atlantic, from Atlanta, 
reached Chattanooga, meeting there in 1851, the road 
from Nashville, which ran some 35 miles from 
Chattanooga towards the West, another subscrip- 
tion was secured from Charleston,'*? for a road 
thence to that point on the Mississippi river opposite 
Arkansas, although, in this instance, with some glim- 
mer of sense, it was conditioned upon the removal 
of the obstruction caused by the city of Augusta’s 
refusal to permit a bridge from the South Carolina 
shore across the Savannah river, by which alone con- 
nection with the railroad beyond could be made from 
South Carolina. But it was only, when, in despair of 


eT. Dero, 
17 Pamphiet, 7 On ds, 18. Vols VIL. CATE, 7.) "p., 16. 


96 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


accomplishing this bridging of the Savannah river 
in 1852,%** $500,000 was given to aid in pushing the 
South Carolina road on from Anderson, 8S. C., to 
Knoxville, Tennessee, that then, by purchase from 
Augusta, the right to bridge the Savannah river and 
connect with the Georgia Railroad was obtained; 
so that, in the end, some hundred or more miles of 
railroad had to be built beyond Columbia in South 
Carolina, merely to secure the connection with the 
Georgia road in 1853, for which Hayne’s great road 
had been stopped at Columbia in 1840. But by 
1853, the futility of any hope of great benefit to 
South Carolina trade from the Georgia connection 
having possessed the minds of those directing affairs 
in South Carolina, $500,000 from Charleston and 
$1,000,000" from the State was granted to pro- 
mote the second of the two routes with which Cal- 
houn had obstructed the French Broad Railway 
from its inception. For five years, with repeated 
disasters, the construction of this second string to 
the bow of Calhoun, was energetically pushed, with 
the vain hope of securing for South Carolina, at that 
late day, what had been thrown away eighteen years 
earlier in blind obedience to a great man’s imperious 
dictation. And it was in asking for an additional 
$1,000,000 from the State and resisting the argu- 
ments concerning the resurrection of the French 
Broad route that Mr. Memminger, later Secretary 
of the Treasury of Confederate States, declared of 
Hayne’s railroad: 


138Tbid. p. 19. 
129Pamphlet, Vol. II, C. L. S. Miller, p. 6. 


97 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“Although that great work was abandoned from causes 
beyond our control, yet it has been the mother of all our 
interior railroads and has not cost the State a single dollar 
of her money.’’4° 

If there was anything which could have been said 
to have further accentuated the fatal folly of the 
abandonment of this great enterprise in favor of 
the attempted junction with the Georgia roads in 
1840 and a route to Arkansas instead of Ohio, it was 
epitomized unconsciously by the same speaker, Mr. 
Memminger, at the same time in 1858, in the same 
speech, from which the above extract was taken: 

“The two roads to the West, which have been assisted by 
Charleston are the Memphis and the Nashville Railroads. 
... We hoped that they would bring trade to the city, 
but it finds a cheaper outlet by the Mississippi river.’1*1 

One word more with regard to the cost of this 
road, which if it had not been stopped at Columbia, 
might possibly have prevented the war between the 
States. In the three years from 1836 to 1839 the 
old Hamburg Railroad, run down and out of condi- 
tion, had been purchased and put into such order 
as to raise the receipts from it fifty per cent, by 
18389. Seventeen miles had been built on the fork 
to Columbia from Branchville, with preparations 
so well forward that to the $1,858,772 spent on the 
153 miles, $584,304 additional, it was estimated, 
would enable the remaining 48 to be completed in a 
year to Columbia, with about $1,300,000 additional 
to be spent to reach the North Carolina line by 
1846, when the total expenditure of the road 


140Pamphlet, Vol. XXI. Memminger, C. L. S. p. 9. 
141Tbid. p. 28. 


98 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


from Charleston to Augusta and from Branchville 
through Columbia to the North Carolina line via 
Spartanburg, would have reached $3,743,076. At 
that point $1,102,600 pledged by North Carolina and 
Tennessee would have been obtained, which with the 
work done and prepared for was all lost by the 
stoppage at Columbia. Yetnine years after Hayne’s 
death, 1848, the report of the president of the South 
Carolina Railroad, James Gadsden, shows $5,546,- 
735.481 spent in securing only an additional 51 
miles of roadway. 


142Pamphlet, Vol. V. C. L. 8. Art. 18, p. 18. 


99 


CHAPTER VII 


The school of Georgia politicians in 1852 did not 
favor Secession. Their objection to it was that it 
would so reduce the value of slaves as to force the 
owners to emancipate them themselves; while, with 
the preservation of the Union, they believed they 
could force slavery to the Pacific. 

Certainly Georgia was in many respects amply 
fitted to lead. By the census of 1850 it was dis- 
closed that in the value of her personal property, re- 
turned for taxation, she led the Union with $213,- 
499,486. Twelve million more than the old and 
wealthy State of Massachusetts, which returned 
$201,976,892. South Carolina came third with 
$178,1380,217. Alabama fourth with $162,463,700. 
New York fifth with $150,719,379.1* 

In the value of their real estate, which could not 
be as well concealed as their personal property, the 
Northern States stood out richer, so that in her 
revenue, Georgia stood not higher than seventh, 
among the States of the Union; but, when revenue, 
expenditure and debt were considered together, no 
State in the Union was apparently in such an emi- 
nently sound and healthy condition; for, with her 
surplus, she could have extinguished her debt in 
five years. 

Of course that which made the personal property 
returned for taxation by the residents of the South- 
ern States, stand out so greatly in excess of that of 
the richer States of the North was the fact that the 
aa, §. Census, 1850 p. 190. 

100 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


bulk of it was in slaves. But that fact reveals why 
the institution of slavery had such a hold upon the 
South, when not more than ten per cent of its in- 
habitants were slave holders. If the statesmen and 
politicians who supported and defended it demanded 
“a guarantee for property fairly acquired,” that 
property bore the bulk of the tax. That was not 
the condition of the North, and the vice of the more 
advanced civilization of that section was that, by 
every device which could be conceived, more and 
more the burden of taxation was thrown upon the 
Door." * 

While not to the swollen condition that is apparent 
today, the North was, for thirty years and more 
prior to the War between the States, the land of the 
capitalist, the abode of American capital. 

How far the determination of Northern capital 
to keep the South financially tributary to it was 
responsible for the rapid railroad development of 
the North and West, it will require much investiga- 
tion to disclose. Whether, with a higher and nobler 
personnel among its leaders and greater regard 
for the toiling masses of its white population, it 
could have prepared the way so thoroughly for the 
conquest of the South is doubtful; but having been 
stricken a blow, even if a weak one, by the tariff 
of 18388, with a home valuation it had parried the 
blow and sustained itself on the increased import 
trade until it could enact the tariff of 1842; and 
when that was replaced by Calhoun’s tariff of 1846, 


*4McMaster, The people of the United States, between 1854 and 1860, 
Vol. VIII. MHanleiter, Speech Robert Harper, 1858. 


101 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


marshalling its industrial dependents, it reached out 
with splendid energy, with one hand grasping the 
South and the other the West and bound them both 
to its girdle with bands of steel. 

We have seen what was attempted in the South 
in the political commercial effort to stretch from the 
Atlantic to Arkansas, after the abandonment of the 
movement to Cincinnati in 1840. Now reverting to 
the West, we find that in Ohio, part of the Cin- 
cinnati, Sandusky and Cleveland Railroad was built 
in 1837; but it was not until 1848 that it was com- 
pleted.145 

In Kentucky, of the 97 miles projected, by 1889, 
there were in operation from Lexington to Frank- 
fort, on one end, 28 miles; from Louisville to Port- 
land on the other end, 3 miles.1** But within nine 
years from the time at which the Louisville, Cin- 
cinnati and Charleston Railroad was stopped at 
Columbia, a railroad extended from Detroit across 
lower Michigan, and by 1851, Cleveland and Pitts- 
burgh were connected by rail; while a second line 
from Toledo below Detroit, paralleled the road from 
Detroit to the lower end of Lake Michigan. By 
1853, down from Lake Michigan to the junction of 
the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, a line continued ~ 
these two from Toledo and Detroit; while from 
Cleveland a net-work of roads reached Indianapolis, 
sending out from that city a line West to Terre 
Haute and one North to Lake Michigan. By 1857 
this had become a perfect mesh of railroads, cross- 


145Paxson, Early Railways of Old Northwest, p. 255. 
146Trotter, Finances of North American States, p. 244. 


102 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ing and recrossing Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and 
reaching up into Wisconsin, while three constituent 
roads stretched across from the North Atlantic 
Coast to the Mississippi River opposite Missouri. 


The situation with regard to population was about 
as follows at this period: The three States men- 
tioned above contained about 4,500,000 white in- 
habitants, which the population of Michigan, Wis- 
consin and Iowa raised to about 6,000,000. Behind 
them were banked some 11,000,000 whites in New 
York, Pennsylvania and New England. 


Meanwhile, to the Nashville Convention of 1850, 
South Carolina had sent a representative, who might 
have been considered a leaf from her great past, 
Langdon Cheves and against the independent se- 
cession of South Carolina, he strove successfully. 


Mr. G. M. Pinckney, the most sympathetic of all 
Calhoun’s biographers, thus sums up the situation 
in 1850: 


“If Mr. Calhoun had lived a little longer, it seems highly 
probable that history would have been different. He cer- 
tainly would have forced matters to head at this session, 
and at this time, had the South taken definite action it 
seems probable that there was left genuine love enough 
for the Union on all sides to save it. To delay ten years 
was necessarily fatal. Every moment lost but added fuel 
to the kindling flame of sectional hatred. Mr. Calhoun’s 
death was a stunning blow. The South fell into confusion. 
Delay resulted and natural causes taking their course pro- 
duced natural results.’’147 


Professor Paxson’s view of the situation for the 
same time seems somewhat in accord with the above: 
Saireinciciey. Life of John C. Calhoun, p. 212. 

103 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“Had the secession movement of 1850 grown into war, 
none of these factors (i. e. railroads) would have been ef- 
fective, and success for separation could hardly have been 
questioned. But in 1860 secession came too late. The North- 
west was crossed and recrossed by an intricate entanglement 
of tracks.”’148 

Such a coincidence of view in such widely sep- 
arated quarters is entitled to the highest respect; 
but it is not the view entertained by the writer of 
this work, to whom 1850 seems to have been too late 
to affect the situation favorably for secession, even 
if Calhoun had survived; for, judged by his career, 
it is exceedingly doubtful if he would have forced 
matters to a head. It would not have been in ac- 
cord with his past. He was a great parliamentarian 
and an even greater debater; but all through his 
career his hand had been forced. He was never 
quite ready for the situation as it developed. It 
may have been greatly to his credit and consistent 
with his views; but he always consulted and pon- 
dered. His political methods so disclose him. Mc- 
Duffie forced his hand with regard to Nullification. 
Clay forced his hand with regard to the tariff of 
1833. For Rhett’s resolution of 1838, he was not 
ready, although that was the logical time and the 
logical course. 

Those who feel, that for this great Republic a 
world task was and is reserved, may rejoice that no 
effort to secede was moved in 1838, but that does 
not effect the question of its possible success had it 
been attempted. Conditions in South Carolina were 
very much confused by Calhoun’s death. To supply 
" 48Paxson, Harly Railways of Old Northwest, p. 266. 

104 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


his place in the United States Senate, Governor 
Seabrook first appointed F. H. Elmore and, upon his 
death in a month or two, Robert W. Barnwell, but 
upon the meeting of the General Assembly of South 
Carolina, six months later, that body elected R. 
Barnwell Rhett, who, for about a year and a quar- 
ter, strove for the accomplishment of the policy of 
secession and failing, resigned and gave way to 
W. F. DeSaussure, apparently in accord with the 
Georgia policy of pushing slavery to the Pacific, 
within the Union, and in the wake of Georgia, South 
Carolina moved until 1860, when her representa- 
tives again took the initiative with the full approval 
of the leaders of the Empire State of the South.1* 

For the carrying into effect, in 1850, of the Geor- 
gia scheme of pushing slavery to the Pacific there 
were in Missouri 592,004 whites, in Arkansas 163,- 
189, and in Kentucky and Tennessee 1,518,247, to 
which the entire South remaining could add 3,422,- 
923, and even if Arkansas had doubled her white 
population since 1840, the 450,000 whites with which 
Ohio’s population had been increased in the same 
time, put in that State one-tenth of the total white 
population of the Union, which, with that with 
which Indiana and Illinois disposed of in about the 
same space as Kentucky and Tennessee below, fur- 
nished fully two and a half times as many to draw 
upon. It should have been apparent, therefore, that 
it would take all that the South could do to hold Mis- 
souri, much less invade the further Northwest, even 
if Iowa, at that, time did not have very many more 
~ Stephens, History of the United States, p. 561. 

105 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


white inhabitants than Arkansas. There was a 
chance to have affected Ohio in 1840; but by 1855 
the movement from the East and the railroads had 
made it the powerful advanced outpost of the Abo- 
litionists. The ten years between 1838 and 1848 
practically determined the course of events, mak- 
ing more and more for war between the slowly 
separating sections, and for the steadily increasing 
black population of slaves in the South. 


If it is true that: 


“Transportation, after all, has determined both the course 
and the period of Western development.’ 159 


—the colonizing stream with which the great and 
populous State of Ohio, from 1840 fecundated the 
prairies of the West might have poured to a consid- 
erable extent into the valleys of the Blue Ridge, the 
Alleghany and the Cumberland mountains along the 
lines of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston 
Railroad to meet and mingle with the stream which 
had been moving westward from South Carolina, 
since 1820.15! In such a case the country might and 
in all probability would have developed at a slower 
pace; but it would have been as a more homogeneous 
people. It is idle to declare that there was an ir- 
repressible conflict. That has always been the claim 
of those who are determined to precipitate such and 
are absolutely dead to— 

“the influence of a free, social and commercial intercourse, 


in softening asperities, removing prejudices, extending 
knowledge and promoting human happiness.” 


150Paxson, Early Railways of Old ah a p. 247. 
151M cOrady, ELIStOrys Olu. NO. Vv Olu Le Det L. 


106 


CHAPTER VIII 


The presidential election of 1852, tended at first 
to allay excitement. A New Englander, affiliating 
closely with Southern men, Franklin Pierce, of New 
Hampshire, won the Democratic nomination over 
competitors much more prominent. Of these com- 
petitors Buchanan and Cass had long and intimately 
been connected with the party leaders of their States 
in the time of Andrew Jackson; trained in the old 
school of politics; drawing what strength they had 
from faithful service. The third competitor, a com- 
paratively new leader in the West, forceful, aggres- 
sive and impatient of restraint, Stephen A. Douglas, ° 
was of an entirely different type. Determined to 
make a spoon or spoil a horn, he evolved the doc- 
trine of squatter sovereignty, and with it soon had 
the country in a turmoil. 

The condition was strange. The Georgians had 
a policy and the lead of a section, but no man among 
them possessed the qualities essential for such a 
task, as their bold program of pushing slavery to the 
Pacific within the Union, demanded. Howell Cobb 
approached nearer the station of leader than any 
other man of his State; but he scarcely measured 
up to what was required. Besides as great as Geor- 
gia was among the Southern States, second only to 
Virginia, in point of population, and quite beyond 
in wealth and resources, among the States of the 
Union, in point of population, she barely ranked 
tenth. From the continuous stream of white im- 
migrants pouring into Illinois that great State was, 


107 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


however, rapidly moving up to the position of fourth 
in population, while in Stephen A. Douglas, she 
possessed one of the most audacious and resource- 
ful of polititians who had ever moved in the affairs 
of the Union, to a great height. Carrying at his 
heels some forty-two Northern votes in Congress, he 
appeared to be just the man the Georgians needed, 
and accordingly in the Congress which met in De- 
cember, 18538, he introduced his bill for the organiza- 
tion of the territory of Nebraska, framing the pro- 
visions thereof upon the precedents set in the or- 
ganization of the territories of Utah and New 
Mexico four years before. Of this bill, a distin- 
guished author, later president of the United States, 
has said: 


“No bolder or more extraordinary measure had ever been 
proposed in Congress, and it came upon the country like a 
thief in the night, without warning or expectation, when 
parties were trying to sleep off the excitement of former 
debates about the extension of slavery.”’152 


Mr. Woodrow Wilson was of the opinion that 
Southern members had never dreamed of demand- 
ing such a measure and that no one but Douglas, 
would have dreamed of offering it to them; but yet 
he says the President had been consulted and had 
given his approval to it, upon the ground that “it 
was founded upon a sound principle which the com- 
promise of 1820 had infringed upon.’*? And cer- 
tain it is that the President had consulted, concern- 
ing it, that Southerner who was destined to occupy 


122XWoodrow Wilson, Division and Reunion. p. 184. 
153T bid. 


108 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the most prominent position ever held by a South- 
erner. Jefferson Davis knew of it. 

Of the author of the bill, Robert Toombs declared 
some seven years later, with his characteristic ex- 
aggeration, that the Apostle Paul was about his only 
superior as a leader. While Alexander H. Stephens, 
with absolute devotion, clung to him, until secession 
swept them apart, Toombs was less faithful. 
Forty-four Northern Democrats, and all but nine of 
the Southern members of the House of Represen- 
tatives, supported the bill, and in the popular branch 
of Congress, it prevailed, by a majority of thirteen 
votes; in the Senate, by a vote of nearly three to 
one.** But Mr. Wilson declares that the Act con- 
tained a fatal ambiguity. When was squatter sov- 
ereignty to give its decision on the question of 
slavery? 

Here was where the break came, when the Act 
was being tried out in practical operation. 

The Southern members thought that Douglas rep- 
resented their view. Mr. Davis, Secretary of War 
at the time of its introduction, distinctly declares, 
that, at Douglas’s request, he obtained the interview 
between Douglas’s committee and the President on 
Sunday, January 22, 1854, by which the President’s 
approval was secured, and he avers, that from the 
terms of the bill and arguments used in its sup- 
port, he thought its purpose was to open the ter- 
ritory “to the people of all the States with every 
species of property recognized by any of them.’ 


154Tbid. D: 1 L85% 
Jefferson Davis, Rise & Fall of Confed. Gov. p. 29, Vol. I. 


109 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


But Douglas was not simply leading the Southern 
minority. .He was endeavoring to formulate a 
policy by means of which he could yoke both sec- 
tions to his triumphal car, and he was just as ready 
to use the Southerners, as they were to use him. 
When the Southerners found out how he proposed 
to over-reach them, Alexander H. Stephens still 
clung to him; but Toombs, less faithful, vociferated 
that he “did’nt have a leg to stand upon.” 

The truth was, compromise upon compromise had 
so involved the question, that it was almost im- 
possible to disentangle it without the use of the 
sword. 

In 1787 there had been a compromise, by which 
slavery and the slave trade had been both recog- 
nized; and over the Missouri question in 1820, the 
Southern States had had a perfect constitutional 
right to dissolve the Union; but again compromise 
had been accepted. 

The admission of California and the law of 1850 
was a distinct breach of the second compromise and 
the right to secede was just as clear, as it had been 
in 1820; but the expediency of such action was 
nothing like as clear. There was no great and 
towering personality around which men could 
gather. Rhett’s resolution in Congress in 1838 was 
the logical result of Calhoun’s teaching since 1833; 
but Calhoun was not ready to act. If ever secession 
was a practical policy it was in 1838 as presented by 
Rhett in Congress.?° 
Sissy eevee ations: p. 451. 

110 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


In South Carolina in 1850, Calhoun was dead, and 
there was the view of Rhett and the view of Cheves. 
In Georgia there was the view of Cobb and the view 
of Toombs, and the view of Hill and the view of 
Stephens. 

Of the man who did more than any other to ar- 
rest secession in 1850, we know least, and what we 
do know does not help us to any great extent to 
understand him. What policy Howell Cobb repre- 
sented is not very clear. He was strong enough 
to be denounced as a traitor by those who could 
not drive him from their path, and somewhat in 
the same way that Hayne was taken out of national 
politics, when State politics required a man of un- 
usual force, Cobb stepped down in 1852 from the 
high station of Speaker of the House of Represen- 
tatives, to become Governor of Georgia; while in 
the last four years before secession, he was silenced 
by his position in Buchanan’s Cabinet. 

But apart from leaders the country had changed, 
and in spite of the declarations to the contrary, in 
nowhere more than in the South. 

The continual increase of the Negro population 
and the immense sums invested in that species of 
property had worked a disintegration of former 
views. 

Nullification had accelerated the change, for the 
views of Hayne in 1827 and Calhoun in 1836, were 
certainly wide apart. 

In 1845 Calhoun had congratulated Hammond on 
the progress of opinion in the South to the high 
ground he had held in advance; but it may well be 


Bit 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


doubted whether Calhoun, himself, would not have 
been startled by the progress disclosed in 1855, as 
evinced by the agitation for the re-opening of the 
slave trade. 


In 1845 when Wise, then United States Minister 
to Brazil, disclosed the manner of conducting the 
slave trade in that country, in which both English- 
men and Americans were implicated, the President, 
in whose cabinet Calhoun then was Secretary of 
State, condemned it without stint, rejoicing that 
“our own coasts are free from its pollution’; al- 
though he was forced to admit that there were 
“many circumstances to warrant the belief that 
some of our citizens are deeply involved in its 
guilt.” 157 

Calhoun’s criticism of Wise on this occasion was 
only that he feared he was injudicious, and that his 
declarations might affect the relations between Bra- 
zil and the United States.** 

Certainly Calhoun was not the man to have 
favored what his chief styled ‘‘pollution,”’ and to 
have remained in his cabinet. 

Again, there is no reason to believe that Calhoun 
sympathized at all with the ambitious scheme of 
forcing slavery to the Pacific. Whatever may have 
been the merits or demerits of his policies, they were 
strictly defensive, and he clung almost religiously 
to the phrase, “slavery as it exists in the South.” 

What that was, to some extent was disclosed by 
the committee on religious instruction of the Ne- 


7Message, President Tyler, Richardson, Vol. 4, p. 863. 
158Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence. p. 665. 


112 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


groes, which, in 1845 received reports from all 
quarters of the South. 


Robert Barnwell Rhett, was at the head of one of 
the principal committees and among its members 
were D. E. Huger, Basil Gildersleeve, Robert W. 
Barnwell and many others prominent in affairs of 


State and matters of culture and religion in the 
South. 


The account from Alabama of “the servant Ellis’ 
is most interesting. His blood and color, it was 
claimed were unmixed, and he gave much aid in the 
meetings among the Negroes, though “more retir- 
ing and modest than most people of his condition, 
when they have ability above their fellows.’’*® 


It is said he could read both Greek and Latin and 
was anxious to undertake Hebrew; and the synods 
of Alabama and Mississippi proposed to purchase 
him, in order to send him to Africa as a Missionary. 


Conditions such as these reports revealed were 
absolutely ignored by the fanatical Abolitionists of 
that day although they are but some of the many 
indications how mild and humanizing slavery, as it 
then existed in the South, was. 

But the question was, could it so continue? And 
by 1855 there were ominous signs of achange. Agi- 
tation began for the re-opening of the slave trade. 

What a frightful moral injury to the South this 
would have been, is evidenced by the statement alone 
of those who advocated this course, and at the same 
time had the courage to express their views on the 


4°Report Com. Religious Instruction Negroes, Jenkins, Vol. 23 pamphlets 
Gi) No. 10 p. 65. 


113 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


inadequacy of the laws then in existence for the 
proper protection of those of the inferior race, who 
were then in the South, improved as they had been 
by years of training. 

In 1856, Governor James H. Adams, of South 
Carolina, had thus expressed himself: 


“If we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then 
we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor, we 
do not want, and which from the very nature of things is 
antagonistic to our institutions. It is much better that our 
drays should be driven by slaves—that our factories should 
be worked by slaves—that our hotels should be served by 
slaves—that our locomotives should be served by slaves, 
than that we should be exposed to the introduction, from 
any quarter, of a population alien to us by birth, training 
and education, and which, in the process of time, must lead 
to that conflict between capital and labor, which makes it 
so difficult to maintain free institutions in all wealthy and 
highly cultivated nations, where such institutions as ours do 
not exist. 

In all slave holding States true policy dictates, that the 
superior race should direct, and the inferior perform all 
menial service. Competition between the white and the 
black man for this service may not disturb Northern sensi- 
bility, but it does not suit our latitude. Irrespective, how- 
ever, of interest, the Act of Congress declaring the slave 
trade piracy, is a brand upon us, which I think it impor- 
tant to remove. If the trade be piracy, the slave must be 
plunder; and no ingenuity can avoid the logical necessity 
of such conclusion. 

My hopes and fortunes are indissolubly associated with 
this form of society. I feel that I should be wanting in 
duty, if I did not urge you to withdraw your assent to an 
Act which is itself a direct condemnation of your institu- 
tions.’’160 


160A ppendix Report Special Com. House Rep. So. Ca. Walker & Evans, 
1857. p. 57. Message Gov. Adams of S. ©. 1856, Vol. 23. 


114 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


That was the true, the honest, the intelligent and 
the reasonable statement of the case; the hopes and 
fortunes of those in control were indissolubly as- 
sociated with the form of society which slavery had 
erected in the South. 


In the elaborate report of the committee of the 
General Assembly of South Carolina, in reply to the 
message, in which the said Act was recommended to 
be nullified; while the honesty and sincerity of the 
members may not be questioned, their woeful un- 
fitness for the position of responsibility placed upon 
them, has,:in the light of time, been made almost 
ludicrously apparent. Their utter inability to ap- 
preciate the terrific evils, to the civilization they 
thought they were defending and strengthening by 
their advocacy of the re-opening of the slave trade, 
was most strikingly indicated by their impressions 
of the effect of emancipation, less lurid than Ham- 
mond’s picture, but as strikingly incorrect. 


“The paralysis of industry, which would ensue from the 
emancipation of the slaves, would, in the course of a single 
year, leave the whole country almost destitute of food and 
the wretched inhabitants would perish by thousands with 
all the lingering tortures of unsatisfied hunger.’’161 


When to this were added the effusions of men 
like Spratt, we can scarcely realize, that this was 
from the State which had produced Robert Barn- 
well, Joseph Alston, William Lowndes and Robert 
Y. Hayne. 

In the minority report, however, of an adopted 
son, J. Johnston Pettigrew, who six years later fell 
11Report Special Com. Reopening Slave Trade, 1857, p. 9. Vol. 28. 
115 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


with honor and renown, high in rank, in the retreat 
from Gettysburg, the State found better representa- 
tion; while the brilliant Hammond, who had averred 
that he: “‘endorsed without reserve the much abused 
sentiment of Governor McDuffie, that ‘slavery is the 
corner-stone of our republican edifice’ ;” nevertheless 
also had declared, in his controversy with Clarkson: 
“T might say, that I am no more in favor of slavery 
in the abstract, than I am of poverty, disease, de- 
formity, idiocy or any other inequality of the human 
family; that I love perfection and I think I should 
enjoy a millennium such as God has promised.’ 


It was not then that men like Hammond, Adams 
and Robert G. Harper, of Georgia, were blind to the 
abuses of slavery, for Adams, the advocate of the 
re-opening of the slave trade, had in his message to 
the General Assembly of South Carolina only the 
year before declared: 

“The administration of our laws in relation to our colored 
population by our Courts of magistrates and free holders, 
as these Courts are at present constituted, calls loudly for 
reform. Their decisions are rarely in conformity with jus- 
tice or humanity. I have felt constrained, in a majority of 
the cases brought to my notice, either to modify the sentence, 
or set it aside altogether.’’163 

Yet Governor Adams was willing to risk the 
frightful increase of such recognized evils, by the 
flooding of the South with a host of barbarians fresh 
from the jungles of Africa. 

But against this, Harper, of Georgia, was a tower 
of strength. 


1822Fammond Speeches, p. 120. 
*Gov. Adams of S. C. Message General Assembly 1855; Vol. 15. 


116 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Prof. DuBois declares that “although such hot- 
heads as Spratt were not able, as late as 1859, to 
carry a substantial majority of the South with them, 
in an attempt to re-open the trade at all hazards, 
yet the agitation did succeed in Sweeping away 
nearly all theoretical opposition to the trade, and 
left the majority of Southern people in an attitude, 
which regarded the opening of the African slave 
trade as merely a question of expediency.’’!*+ 

This he attempted to sustain by quotations from 
the Charleston Standard, Richmond Examiner, New 
Orleans Delta, and other Southern papers, intimat- 
ing that Johnston Pettigrew’s minority report cost 
him his re-election to the Legislature of South Caro- 
lina. As had been shown, it did not, however, stand 
in the way of his elevation to a high command of the 
forces South Carolina furnished for the War be- 
tween the States; while Senator Hammond, who 
had risen to the highest honor his State could be- 
stow, declared unequivocably in 1858, with regard 
to the re-opening of the slave trade: “I once enter- 
tained the idea myself, but on further investigation 
abandoned it. I will not now go into the discussion 
of it further than to say that the South is itself 
divided on that policy, and from appearances, op- 
posed to it by a vast majority.’ 

James Chesnut, the other senator from South 
Carolina, also announced himself: publicly against 
it in the same year. But it was in the profoundly 
thoughtful and admirably thorough argument of 


*4DuBois, Suppression Slave Trade, p. 173. 
16Ffammond Speeches, p. 335. 


117 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Harper of Georgia, that the opponents of re-opening 
found the best representation. 

Southern to the core, it is a defense of slavery 
‘‘as it existed in the South,” that cannot be improved 
upon. 

Harper knew that slave labor was not by any 
means cheap labor. Like Hammond and other stu- 
dents of affairs, he knew that free labor was cheaper 
both in Great Britain and the United States, but 
that the reports of the parliamentary commission 
of 1842 had indicated that the laboring classes of 
the United Kingdom were in a more miserable con- 
dition, and were more degraded morally and phy- 
sically than the slaves of the South. He realized 
that capital would inevitably reach out for cheap 
labor, which while a benefit to the employer and the 
consumer, would slowly undermine the foundations 
of the republic, bringing all labor down, while it 
built up a privileged class of idle rich. He heard 
in this cry for the re-opening of the slave trade, the 
same demand for cheap labor with all the ills which 
the South had freed herself from, in the years in 
which she had trained and elevated her expensive 
laboring class. He saw this cheap imported slave 
labor invading the province of the remnant of the 
white working class of the South, and rendering it 
inimical to the institution. But above and beyond 
all this, he saw the slave trade, as his forbears had 
seen it in the days the South produced her strongest 
men, and without any reserve he declared: 


“By the votes of Southern representatives as well as 
Northern, we have stamped upon it the brand and penalty 


118 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of the greatest of crimes against mankind ... The change 
has not yet been worked in public opinion in the South. It 
will be hard to produce it. When the attempt shall be made, 
it will develop a division which ages of discussion will ut- 
terly fail to overcome.’ 66 


As objectionable as slavery is in the abstract, it 
is a debatable question whether Harper of Georgia, 
advocate of slavery, as it existed in the South 
in 1858, but determined opponent of the re- 
opening of the slave trade, did not occupy higher 
ground from a humanitarian standpoint, than did 
Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut in 1787, who was 
then, “for leaving the clause as it stands, let every 
State import what it pleases . . . As population in- 
creases poor laborers will be so plenty as to render 
slaves useless.”’ 


Ellsworth might have gone further and declared 
with truth, that, if poor laborers were not sufficiently 
plenteous, they could be imported. In 1912 they 
were being brought in in such swarms that our 
civilization was said to be threatened thereby. 

But while there was this pronounced opposition 
to the re-opening of the slave trade in the South, 
there is not much room to doubt that the slave popu- 
lation of the South had been largely recruited with 
illicit importations from abroad from 1808. To 
what extent it is difficult to arrive at with any degree 
of accuracy. 

In his “Suppression of the Slave Trade,” Prof. 
DuBois quotes Congressional documents, to indicate 
that from Amelia Island, on the Gulf Coast, in 1817 


166Robert G. Harper, Argument eG Trade, Vol. 23, pamphlet C. L. 8. 
Hanleiter, Atlanta Ga. No. 8. p. 


119 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the pirates had eleven armed vessels with which 
they captured slavers, and brought their cargoes 
into the United States'*? and that, a year after the 
capture of the island by United States troops, 
African and West Indian Negroes were almost daily 
illicitly introduced into Georgia.’*® He also claims 
that the estimates of three representatives of Con- 
gress, Tallmadge of New York, Middleton, of South 
Carolina, and Wright of Virginia, in the year 1819, 
were that slaves were then being brought into the 
country at the rate of about 14,000 a year.** He 
thinks while smuggling never entirely ceased, the 
participation of Americans declined between 1825 
and 1835, when it again revived, reaching its high- 
est activity between 1840 and 1860, when the city 
of New York was “the principal port of the world 
for this infamous commerce, although Portland and 
Boston were only second.’7° He quotes DeBow for 
the statement that, in 1856, forty slavers cleared an- 
nually from Eastern harbors, clearing yearly $17,- 
000,000, and from the report of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society, that between 1857 and 1858 twenty- 
one of the twenty-two slavers seized by the British 
cruisers proved to be American, from New York, 
Boston and New Orleans;!™ and Stephen A. Doug- 
las claimed to have seen recently imported slaves 
at Vicksburg and Memphis in 1859.17 


167DuBois, Suppression Slave Trade, p. 113. 
168Thid. p. 114. 

169Tbid., p. 124. 

LT bid. p. 179. 

171Tbid. 

72Tbid. p. 181. 


120 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The Charleston Cowrier in 1839 printed an ex- 
tract from the New York Journal of Commerce, 
to the effect that twenty-three vessels under the 
American flag had sailed about that time from 
Havana on the slave trade!™*. And the Charleston 
Mercury in 1849 declared: “The slave trade is again 
very active in Cuba.’’!” 


In support of these claims it can be said: 


Of the increase of the colored population of the 
United States from 1850 to 1860, more than one- 
half was in the four States of Louisiana, Mississippi, 
Arkansas and Texas, into which slaves could most 
easily be imported, and the temper of the most 
northerly of those was becoming extremely sensitive 
upon the subject of allusions to the institution of 
slavery, as the following extract of a resolution 
adopted by the Legislature of that State, and sent 
to the other States of the Union, indicates: 


“Whereas the right of property in slaves is expressly 
recognized by the Constitution of the United States, and is 
by virtue of such recognition guaranteed against unfriendly 
action on behalf of the General Government; and whereas, 
each State of the Union, by the fact of being a party to the 
federal compact, is also a party to the recognition and guar- 
anty aforesaid ... Resolved: That the citizens of the 
State of Ohio have pursued a course peculiarly unjust and 
odious, in their fanatical hostility to institutions for which 
they are not responsible; in their encouragement of known 
felons and endorsement of repeated violations of law and 
decency, and in their establishment of abolition presses, 
and circulation of incendiary documents, urging a servile 
population to bloodshed and rapine, and by reason of the 


173Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 504. 
1740harleston Mercury, May 26, 1849. 


121 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


premises, it is the duty and interest of the people of Arkan- 
sas to discontinue all social and commercial relations with 
the citizens of the said State.” etc.175 

It is interesting to note that in his very able and 
extremely interesting paper on “The Fight for the 
Northwest,” 1860, the map which accompanies the 
article of Prof. W. E. Dodd, does not include Ohio. 


Quoting from a speech of Senator Hammond in 
1858, in which the latter declared: “The most valu- 
able part of the Mississippi belongs to us, and al- 
though those who have settled above us, are now 
opposed to us, another generation will tell another 
tale,’’7° Mr. Dodd draws from it the conclusion that 
“Hammond’s idea was that the railroads connecting 
the West and the South, would so stimulate recipro- 
cal trade between.the farmers and the planters, that 
the resistance of the Chicago-Detroit region would 
be overcome.” 

But it should be borne in mind that in 1858-1860, 
between the West and the South there stretched a 
great tract of country over six hundred miles in 
length, and nearly three hundred miles in breadth, 
through the whole extent of which not a single rail- 
road stretched across from the Potomac at Har- 
per’s Ferry to the junction of the Ohio River with 
the Mississippi, near the northeastern corner of 


Arkansas. 

To have crossed this great stretch just about the 
center at its widest part was the scheme of Hayne’s 
road which had been abandoned for a scheme of 
) ateResolutinnas State of Arkansas, 1855, Vol. 15, pamphlets C. L. 8. 
ut pevonta The Fight for the Northwest, 1860, Am. His Review Vol. XVI, 


122 


LIBRARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 





O3L939°0Nd “ ee ee 
QSLAIdWOS SAYVMTIVY 





avEleyalolad 





O98I'SN 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


weakly paralleling below, the network stretching 
west above. 

The effort of the presidential campaign by the 
Democrats may have been for an election in the 
House in 1860, and may have been lost, as Prof. 
Dodd declares, “only by a narrow margin by the 
votes of the foreigners, whom the railroads poured 
in numbers into the contested region;” but that - 
triumph at the most would have only deferred the 
contest for another four years, for by its special 
correspondent in the West, the Columbus, Georgia, 
Times had been informed in 1854: 

“If Kansas becomes a free soil State slavery will be 
doomed for Missouri.”!77 

The attempt then, inaugurated in 1840, to parallel 
the Northern systems, pouring population westward, 
was recognized as an impossible task in 1860, and 
with the election of Lincoln, known as the man who 
had declared a house divided against itself cannot 
stand, the South attempted to end the division by 
Secession. 


To such a solution the more powerful North was 
unwilling to consent, and the war followed for the 
Union. 


7Columbus, Ga., Times, Nov. 19, 1854. 


123 


CHAPTER IX 


From a consideration of the wisdom, propriety 
and morality of importing African slaves as an ar- 
ticle of commerce in 1787, the Negro Question in the 
United States had progressed to the wisdom and 
propriety of preventing any extension of the insti- 
tution of slavery beyond those limits in which it 
existed in 1820, and from this, with repeated agita- 
tions, fairly shaking the Union to its foundation, 
followed by compromises satisfactory to none, there 
had flared up a consideration of the re-opening of the 
Slave Trade in 1856, swiftly followed by Secession 
and war in 1860, and Emancipation, as a war meas- 
ure, in 1868, directed against the eleven Confederate 
States. 

Throughout the four years of desperate struggle 
between the seceding States and the consolidated 
Northern and Western States, the slaves, by their 
behavior, illustrated moral character greatly to their 
credit, and indisputably indicative of the civilizing 
influences of the institution, in which they had been 
trained. But peace in 1865 at once precipitated the 
question of the status of the freedman. In the 
Northern States it was an important question. In 
the Southern States it beggared all other questions. 

With a property loss running up into the billions 
and a loss in virile manhood almost incalculable and 
an indescribable uprooting and overturning of in- 
dustrial conditions, the failure of Secession left the 
eleven States, which had constituted the Southern 
Confederacy, with a white population of about 


124 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


5,000,000, and a colored population of about 4,000,- 
000; but in three of them, South Carolina, Missis- 
sippi and Louisiana the colored population exceeded 
the white. 

Was the forecast of Calhoun and de Tocqueville to 
be verified? 

In no States was the outlook as dark as in South 
Carolina, where there could hardly have been more 
than 250,000 whites to 400,000 Negroes, and in 
Mississippi, where the colored majority was not quite 
so large, the proportions there being 350,000 white 
to some 430,000 Negroes. Yet of the colored popu- 
lation in South Carolina, judging from the number 
of free persons of color, in 1860, some 9,914,178 and 
the number of house slaves and mechanics in 
Charleston returned for taxation in 1859,'7° in the 
great mass, there were those of the Negroes, who, 
on account of training, education and environment, 
together with inherited tradition, if they had only 
been left unplayed upon by those who knew them 
not, might have been relied upon in any great 
emergency. These, at an estimate, might have 
amounted to 380,000 in South Carolina; in Missis- 
sippi, less. 

In both of these States, therefore, an earnest, 
thoughtful attempt was designed by the former rul- 
ing class of whites, to rebuild the political structure, 
at the same time readjusting the Negroes to the 
changed condition brought about by emancipation. 
But, before considering this much berated effort of 


178Compendium of the U. S. Census 1870, p. 14. 
179List of Taxpayers, Charleston, S. C. 1859. 


125 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the vanquished, a short sketch of conditions in South 
Carolina in the spring and summer of 1865 will 
show to some extent the increasing complexities and 
difficulties of the problem, which Lincoln’s death 
saved him from, and which Andrew Johnson had to 
face. 


Even before Lincoln’s assassination there was 
evidence of a strong disposition, upon the part of 
the pronounced abolitionists, to humiliate the over- 
thrown, and, in particular, that State and city which 
for three decades had led the fight for “Slavery as 
we know it in the Southern States.” 

On April 6, 1865, William Lloyd Garrison, 
United States Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachu- 
setts, Judge Kelly of Pennsylvania, Theodore Tilton 
and his intimate friend Rev. Henry Ward Beecher of 
New York, with George Thompson of England, 
visited Charleston. 


By General Saxton of Massachusetts, they were 
personally conducted to the Citadel Green on Cal- 
houn Street, a circumstance calling for some face- 
tious remarks by Major Delany, a very remarkable 
colored member of the General’s Staff, and there 
the general presented the great abolitionist to the 
immense throng that had gathered to hear him. 
But, as thoroughly as the general and his distin- 
guished guests considered that they understood con- 
ditions, it is possible, they were slighly surprised by 
the aplomb with which Samuel J. Dickerson (as a 
slave a bricklayer, but as a local freedman, dropping 
his tools for a higher pursuit and destined to become 
the mountebank of the bar) thrust himself and his 


126 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


two daughters into the very centre of the picture. 
In a fluent speech, Dickerson presented Garrison 
with a wreath. The great man complimented him 
in his reply, exalted the State of Massachusetts and 
himself introduced Senator Wilson, as one of the 
“mudsills’” of Massachusetts, who had from such 
condition risen to the eminence he had attained. 
Then the great abolitionist gave way to the Sena- 
tor, who proclaimed the occasion “the proudest day 
of his life.” 

Shouting to the excitable throng before him that 
he felt ‘‘the slave power under his heel” he bellowed 
out his sentiments as follows: 

“TI want the proud and haughty chivalry of South Carolina 
to know .. . that the black men and black women of South 
Carolina are as free as they are ... And further that they 
are loyal to the flag of the country, while they are false 
and traitorous . . . We have beaten; we have whipped them; 
their power is broken and they are lost forever.’’18° 

He was followed by Judge Kelly, who denounced 
ex-President Buchanan and eulogized Sam Dicker- 
son. Other speeches followed in a similar vein and 
to such an extent did the orgy of oratory extend 
that the apparently one sane member of the band 
felt himself impelled upon the occasion of a later 
address delivered at Zion Church to warn the Ne- 
groes against— 

“their remaining enemies, pride, indolence, impertinence; 
they are the serpents which will tempt the people.’’181 

The war was not as yet absolutely over and this 
speech of Senator Wilson’s widely advertised must 
~ 220harleston Courier, April 7, 1865. 


181Tb d 


127 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


have rendered many Confederate officers desperate. 
Don C. Seitz in his very valuable volume, “Braxton 
Bragg, General of the Confederacy” gives a most 
interesting letter from Wade Hampton, not a fort- 
night later, to Jefferson Davis, arguing against ac- 
ceptance of the terms of General Sherman to General 
Johnston, in which he pictures most effectively the 
conditions worse than war, which were foreshad- 
owed by surrender. But fierce as was the blaze that 
Wilson and his like were fanning, it became a de- 
vouring flame with the assassination of Lincoln. 
This President Johnson, with the aid of Seward, 
strove earnestly to quench. 


Born in North Carolina, the most democratic 
State of the old South, Andrew Johnson had raised 
himself from the humblest of origins to a position 
of distinct prominence in that western Southern 
State Tennessee, mainly peopled from North Caro- 
lina. Having been governor of and senator from 
Tennessee, he had been placed in the dangerous office 
of war governor in that State at a time, when 
through it echoed and reéchoed the continual tramp 
of opposing armies, as they reeled back and forward 
in contests rivalling those which soaked the soil of 
Virginia with blood. 

With nothing of the personal magnetism or the 
attractive traits of his predecessor, the great rail 
splitter and wrestler of the West; immovable to 
every suggestion that he should purchase support 
with prostitution of the appointing power, even for 
a good end; giving out his sentiments with an ag- 
gressive honesty, which must have shocked the care- 


128 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


less average; nothing could have more clearly 
marked the gulf between him and the sentimentality 
of the abolitionists, Garrison, Davis, Kelly and 
others, than his reception in the very first days of 
his presidency of the delegation of colored men who 
called upon him chiefly to indulge in that, to them 
the dearest right of freedom, free speech. To these 
and to the general public of the North, his reply 
must have been offensive, whatever truth it may 
have contained. He said in part: 


“It is easy in Congress and from the pulpit, North and 
South to talk about polygamy and Brigham Young and de- 
bauchery of various kinds; but there is also one great fact 
that four millions of people lived in open and notorious 
concubinage. The time has come when you must correct 
this thing. You know what I say is true and you must do 
something to correct it by example as well as words and 
professions. ...I trust in God the time may come when 
you shall be gathered together in a clime and country 
suited to you, should it be found that the two races cannot 
get along together.’’182 


It is almost idle, after the above, to state that 
Johnson was absolutely devoid of the kindly tact and 
vulgar humor, which had so endeared Lincoln, the 
supplest politician of his time, to the coarse mass of 
the electorate, as he had voiced for it, its thoughts 
in a tongue it could understand and appreciate. 


When we reflect, that Johnson, a Southern man, 
the Vice President coming from the conquered South, 
was handed the reins at the moment when the vic- 
torious North, flushed with conquest, saw its great 
leader, identified with the West, hurled from his 
~ 38Tbid. May 26, 1865, 

129 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


high position to bloody death, at the hands of a 
murderer, who proclaimed his sympathy with the 
vanquished South, the immensity of the difficulties 
about to confront him begins to appear. In 
addition, he, himself, before being steadied by the 
responsibilities of the office, had ‘‘breathed threaten- 
ings and slaughter.” 

In a proclamation, claiming that Jefferson Davis 
and others had incited, concocted and procured the 
atrocious murder of President Abraham Lincoln 
and the attempted assassination of William H. 
Seward, ex-President Jefferson Davis had been held 
up to obloquy and, upon his capture, imprisoned 
and chained; but what was infinitely more horrible, 
Wirz, the Confederate officer in charge of Anderson- 
ville, was made a human sacrifice, under circum- 
stances which have left an ineffaceable blot upon all 
in any way responsible for making him the scape- 
goat for the very effective military policy which 
refused the Confederate offer to exchange prisoners. 
If it took the magnanimity and fortitude of Seward 
to point out the method by which the Union might 
be saved from the fate in which the Congressional 
conspirators meant to involve it, for their own im- 
mediate ends, and if, in this hacked victim of the as- 
sassins, Johnson found the anchor by which he rode 
out the storm which burst upon him; yet it should 
be remembered that nothing but the sturdiest in- 
tegrity and most indomitable courage could have 
nerved Johnson to even attempt the struggle, he 
fought out to the end. Conditions in the South were 
appalling. Bled to a whiteness, which not even 


130 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


France experienced in the Great War; with her 
labor system hopelessly disorganized by the Freed- 
man’s Bureau; not only by its methods but by the 
openly announced suggestions of its head, General 
Howard, that the landholders should be compelled by 
the Federal Government to furnish their former 
slaves with land,** industry stood still. With Negro 
troops quartered in every direction under “‘the delib- 
erate purpose to emphasize the completeness of the 
catastrophe which the war had brought upon the 
South,’** collisions between them and the whites 
were of almost daily occurrence. But these could not, 
in the bulk of cases, be attributed to the truculence of 
Southern slave holders from the fact that instances 
were not few, in which Northern troops, acting in 
the line of duty, were assailed by colored men. A 
Federal soldier, acting as guard and on his post at 
a house in Abbeville, was shot by colored soldiers,?* 
incensed against the inmates. Sergeant Terry and 
four members of the 127th New York Volunteers, 
acting as a guard on the Battery at Charleston, were 
set upon by Negroes abetted by members of the 35th 
United States Colored Troops and two of the guard 
wounded, before the arrival of additional white 
troops scattered the assailants with five casulties 
and some arrests.1**° Later, Lieutenant A. S. Bodine, 
of the same regiment, for clearing a meeting of 
whites of uninvited Negroes, among whom appeared 
Negro soldiers with sidearms, was courtmartialed 
by order of General Hatch in command at Charles- 
183Tbid. Dec. 27, 1865. 
14Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, p. 30. 


18 Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, p. 5. 
18Oharleston Courier, June 19, 1865. 


131 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ton, the court finding him guilty, on the flimsiest 
evidence, of “unwarrantable exercise of arbitrary 
power” and sentencing him to reprimand by his 
superior officer, which reprimand was immediately 
ordered to be withdrawn by the general in command 
of the department.**? 


With such conditions in towns and cities it is 
scarcely surprising to read the account of the execu- 
tion a little later of James Grippen and Ben Red- 
ding of Co. F, 104th United States Colored Troops, 
on charges of rape, arson and burglary, they with 
others, not apprehended, having broken into a house 
near McPhersonville, South Carolina, and there 
ravished four white women, named.'** With such 
facts leaking out from time to time, in spite of the 
pressure from outside of his cabinet to induce him 
to leave South Carolina for a couple of years under 
military rule, President Johnson determined to ap- 
point a provisional governor and, for this purpose, 
issued a proclamation which was in part as fol- 
lows: 


“Whereas the 4th section of the 4th article of the Con- 
stitution of the United States declares that the United 
States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a repub- 
lican form of government and shall protect each of them 
against invasion and domestic violence; and whereas the 
President of the United States is by the Constitution made 
Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy as well as chief 
civil executive officer of the United States, and is bound by 
solemn oath faithfully to execute the office of President of 
the United States and to take care that the laws be faith- 
fully executed; and whereas the rebellion which has been 


1w7Tbid. July 18, 1865. 
188Tbid. Dec. 7, 1865. 


132 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


waged by a portion of the people of the United States against 
the properly constituted authorities of the Government there- 
of in the most violent and revolting form, but whose organ- 
ized and armed forces have been almost entirely overcome, 
has in its revoluntionary progress, deprived the people of 
the State of South Carolina of all civil government; and 
whereas it becomes necessary and proper to carry out and 
enforce the obligations of the United States to the people of 
South Carolina in securing them in the enjoyment of a repub- 
lican form of government. Now therefore, in obedience 
to the high and solemn duties imposed upon me by the 
Constitution of the United States, and for the purpose of 
enabling the loyal people of said State to organize a State 
Government, whereby justice may be established, domestic 
tranquillity insured and loyal citizens protected in all their 
rights of life, liberty and property, I, Andrew Johnson, 
President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of 
the army and navy of the United States do hereby appoint 
Benjamin F. Perry of South Carolina, Provisional Governor 
of the State of South Carolina, whose duty it shall be at 
the earliest practicable time to prescribe such regulations 
as may be necessary and proper for convening a Convention 
composed of delegates to be chosen by that portion of the 
people of said State who are loyal to the United States and 
no others, for the purpose of altering or amending the 
Constitution thereof and with authority to exercise within 
the limits of said State all the powers necessary and proper 
to enable such loyal people of the State of South Carolina 
to restore said State to its constitutional relation to the 
Federal Government and to present such a republican form 
of State Government as will entitle the State to the guarantee 
therefor and its people to the protection of the United States 
against invasion, insurrection and domestic violence; pro- 
vided that in any election that may hereafter be held for 
choosing delegates to any State Convention as aforesaid, no 
person shall be qualified as an elector or shall be eligible 
as a member of such convention unless he shall have pre- 
viously taken and subscribed the oath of amnesty as set 
forth in the President’s proclamation, May 29th, 1865 and 


133 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


is a voter as prescribed by the Constitution or laws of the 
State of South Carolina in force immediately before the 
date of the socalled Ordinance of Secession. And the said 
convention which convenes, or the Legislature that may 
thereafter be assembled will prescribe the qualifications of 
electors and the eligibility of persons to hold office under the 
Constitution and laws of the State, as or may the people of 
the several States composing the Federal Union have right- 
fully exercised from the origin of the Government to the 
present time. And I do hereby direct, etc.” 


In the proclamation appeared the command that 
the military authorities should in no way obstruct, 
hinder or interfere with the above.'®® Just previously 
to Governor Perry’s proclamation calling such con- 
vention, a letter appeared contributing greatly to 
the success of the President’s plan in South Caro- 
lina. The writer of the letter was Wade Hampton, 
late Lieutenant General, C.S.A. The letter reveals 
the despairing condition of many, in its attempt to 
assuage such. It was widely reproduced and ran 
thus: 


“To the editor of the Columbia Phoenix, Sir: 

Numerous communications having been addressed to me, 
proposing to form a colony to emigrate, I take this method 
of answering them, not only on account of their number but 
because of the want of all mail facilities. The desire to 
leave a country which has been reduced to such a deplorable 
condition as ours and whose future has so little of hope 
is doubtless as widespread as it is natural. But I doubt the 
propriety of this expatriation of so many of our best men. 
The very fact that our State is passing through so terrible 
an ordeal as the present should cause her sons to cling 
the more closely to her. My advice to all of my fellow 
citizens is that they should devote their whole energies to 


8°Ibid. June 30, 1865. 
134 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the restoration of law and order, the reestablishment of ag- 
riculture and commerce, the promotion of education and the 
rebuilding of our cities and dwellings which have been laid 
in ashes. To accomplish these objects, the highest that 
patriotism can conceive, I recommend that all, who can do 
so should take the oath of allegiance to the United States 
Government, so that they may participate in the restoration 
of Civil Government to our State. War, after four years 
of heroic but unsuccessful struggle has failed to secure to 
us the rights for which we engaged in it. To save any of 
our rights—to rescue anything more from the general ruin 
—will require all the statesmanship and all the patriotism 
of our citizens. If the best men of our country—those who 
for years past have risked their lives in her defence—refuse 
to take the oath, they will be excluded from the councils of 
the State, and its destiny will be committed of necessity to 
those who forsook her in her hour of need or to those who 
would gladly pull her down to irretrievable ruin. To guard 
against such a calamity, let all true patriots devote them- 
selves with zeal and honesty of purpose to the restoration 
of law, the blessings of peace and the rescue of whatever 
liberty may be saved from the general wreck. If, after an 
honest effort to effect that object, we fail we can then seek 
a home in another country. A distinguished citizen of our 
State—an honest man and true patriot—has been appointed 
Governor. He will soon call a Convention of the people which 
will be charged with the most vital interests of our State. 
Choose for this Convention your best and truest men; not 
those who have skulked in the hour of danger—nor those 
who have worshipped Mammon, while their country was 
bleeding at every pore—nor the politicians, who after urg- 
ing war dared not encounter its hardships, but those who 
laid their all upon the altar of their country. Select such 
men and make them serve as your representatives. You 
will then be sure that your rights will not be wantonly 
sacrificed, nor your liberty bartered for a mess of pottage. 
My intention is to pursue this course. I recommend it to 
others. Besides the obligations I owe to my State, there are 
others of a personal character, which will not permit me 


135 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


to leave the country at present. I shall devote myself 
earnestly, if allowed to do so, to the discharge of these ob- 
ligations, public and private. In the meantime I shall obtain 
all information which would be desirable in the establish- 
ment of a colony, in case we should be ultimately forced to 
leave the country. I invoke my fellow citizens, especially 
those who have shared with me the perils and the glories 
of the last four years, to stand by our State manfully and 
truly. The Roman Senate voted thanks to one of their 
generals, because in the darkest hour of the Republic, he did 
not despair. Let us emulate the example of the Romans 
and thus entitle ourselves to the gratitude of our country. 


Respectfully, 


Wade Hampton.19 
July 27, 1865. 


The convention was held and following it an elec- 
tion for governor and members of the General As- 
sembly under the new Constitution and the most dis- 
tinguished members of the convention, without re- 
gard to differences of opinion as to policies, united 
in recommending as candidate for governor Hon. 
James L. Orr, who prior to the war had been Speaker 
of the United States House of Representatives and 
with the organization of the Confederate States, a 
Senator from South Carolina and who had organized 
a command and seen service in the War between the 
States. 

Despite these facts and in the teeth of his pub- 
lished declination of a nomination, in his absence, 
General Hampton was nominated for governor by 
the mechanics of Charleston and only defeated by 
733 votes in a total of 19,113 cast, a vote measured 
by the white males of voting age just after the war 

120T bid. Aug. 1, 1865. 

136 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


and its disabilities, which must have been at least 
forty per cent of what could have possibly been 
polled. 


A legislature most representative of the State as- 
sembled and from the names appended to the: “Act 
preliminary to the legislation induced by the eman- 
cipation of slaves,’ passed Nov. 19, 1865, W. D. 
Porter, President of the Senate, C. H. Simonton, 
Speaker of the House, and James L. Orr, Governor, 
appear officially responsible for the legislation; but 
the main work of framing it was done by D. L. 
Wardlaw and Armistead Burt. Although continu- 
ously and often very incorrectly assailed, viewed by 
a critic in no way partial to the South, these efforts 
of the vanquished, before the flood of Reconstruc- 
tion was let loose by Congress upon the South, do 
not appear as frightful as they still are alleged to be. 


Professor Burgess, speaks of them in general in 
the following terms: 


“When the newly reorganized States came to assume 
jurisdiction over matters concerning the freedmen, they 
found themselves driven to some legislation to prevent the 
whole Negro race from becoming paupers and criminals. 
It was in the face of such a situation that the legislatures 
of these States passed laws concerning apprenticeship, vag- 
rancy and civil rights which were looked upon at the North 
as attempts to reenslave the newly emancipated and served 
to bring the new State governments at the South into deep 
reproach. It must be remembered, however, that at the time 
of the passage of the Stevens resolution by the House of 
Representatives, only two of Mr. Johnson’s reconstructed 
States had passed any laws upon these subjects. These two 
were Mississippi and South Carolina, and a close examination 


137 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of the text of these enactments will hardly justify the in- 
terpretation placed upon them by the Radical Republi- 
cans.”’191 


Professor Dunning in a later work states that: 


“South Carolina forbade persons of color to engage in any 
trade or business other than husbandry and farm or domes- 
tic service, except under a license requiring a substantial an- 
nual fee; and in the code concerning master and servants 
embodied many rules that strongly suggested those formerly 
in force as to master and slave.’ 

The license required for a shopkeeper was sub- 
stantial, also that for a pedlar. It was one hundred 
dollars a year. In both of these vocations the mass 
of the Negroes could be easily fleeced by the shrewd 
and unscrupulous members of the race; but in all 
other vocations, except those free, it was only ten 
dollars.7*° 

While accusing Wilson, Sumner and other ex- 
tremists of distorting the spirit and purpose of both 
the laws and the lawmakers of the South, Profes- 
sor Dunning says: 

“Yet as a matter of fact, this legislation, far from em- 
bodying any spirit of defiance towards the North or any 
purpose to evade the conditions which the victors had im- 
posed, was, in the main, a conscientious and straightforward 
attempt to bring some sort of order out of social and eco- 
nomic chaos which a full acceptance of the war and emanci- 
pation involved.’’194 

In his opinion: 

“After all, the greatest fault of the Southern lawmakers 
was not that their procedure was unwise per se, but that 
astpareeeeeconetrintion and the Constitution, p. 45. 

12Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, pp. 56, 57. 


23Statutes S. C. Vol. 138, p. 299. 
1%4Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, pp. 57, 58. 


138 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


when legislating as a conquered people, they failed adequately 
to consider and be guided by the prejudices of their con- 
querors.”’195 

If there is ground for condemnation in the above, 
the South must be condemned for thinking better 
of their conquerors than they deserved. The South 
Carolina Act, above alluded to, excepted from the 
provisions of what has been called the “Black Code” 
—‘“every person who may have of Caucasian blood, 
seven-eighths or more,’ who it provided “shall be 
deemed a white person,’’** declaring, however, that: 
“all other free Negroes, mulattoes and mestizos, all 
freed women and all descendants through either sex 
of any of these, except as above, shall be known as 
persons of color.” 

It declared that the statutes and regulations con- 
cerning slaves were inapplicable to persons of color 
and although such were not entitled to social or po- 
litical equality with white persons, they were given 
the right to own and dispose of property, to make 
contracts, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to sue 
and be sued, and to receive protection under the law 
in their persons and property. 

While the Black Code did therefore regulate the 
relations and restrain persons of color, in Mr. Dun- 
ning’s and Mr. Burgess’s opinion, there was little 
in the South Carolina Act calculated to arouse any 
pronounced hostility in the North. In the opinion of 
the latter, indeed, it— 

“provided for substantial equality in civil rights between 
persons of color and white persons.’’197 
~ 368Tbid. p. 58. 


26Statutes, S, ©. Vol, 18, 
127Burgess, Reconstruction anda ‘the rConatitudion: Dito: 


139 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Two provisions it did contain of great importance, 
which it must be borne in mind were framed by the 
representatives of 250,000 whites surrounded by 
400,000 Negroes, ninety per cent of whom were 
densely ignorant. The first of these was aimed to 
prevent the burden of this helpless ignorance from 
increasing; the second to secure to this population 
a measure of protection, which those who had eman- 
cipated the slaves had not granted to the freedmen 
in their own section, by their own laws, for the 
greater part of the time of their living in Free 
States.— 


“XXII. No person of color shall migrate into and reside 
in this State, unless within twenty days after his arrival 
within the same he shall enter into bond with two free- 
holders as sureties to be approved by the Judge of the 
District Court or a Magistrate, in a penalty of one thousand 
dollars conditioned for his good behavior and for his sup- 
port if he should become unable to support himself.’’19§ 


This act further provided that upon failure to 
furnish bond the free person of color could be 
ordered to leave the State, and, upon failure to leave, 
be subjected to corporal punishment within a cer- 
tain time, and if still contumacious, could be im- 
prisoned in the State Penitentiary for a period. The 
other act granted to the immense black majority 
what the laws of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, for 
almost half a century, had denied to the feeble 
minority of free blacks who had entered their 
borders: 


weStatutes S. C. Vol. 18, p. 251. 


140 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“In every case civil and criminal in which a person of 
color is a party or which affects the person or property of 
a person of color, persons of color shall be competent wit- 
nesses.”’199 


In its day and since, this legislation has been 
roundly denounced. Those in control of Federal 
politics saw in it a peaceful settlement of great 
questions which threatened their supremacy, and 
bitterly and unreservedly reprobated it, stirring up 
public opinion in that section, which yet flushed with 
its conquest, was unwilling to permit any interfer- 
ence with its great mission of “putting the bottom 
rail on top.” 

The conquerors had preserved the Union and 
abolished slavery. Those were two immense 
achievements, even if ruthlessly attained. 

As terrible as was the price which the South paid 
for the abolition of slavery, it was not too great, 
taking all things into consideration; and the man- 
ner of the abolition was such, also, that in time it 
must have given rise to as it did eventually produce, 
that mutual respect between the sections which had 
not before existed. 

While Emancipation, being confiscation of prop- 
erty without due process of law, can never be legally 
justified, and only can be excused as a war measure, 
yet, if the Southern people, white and black, could 
only be made to see conditions as they are now in 
the South and to realize that posterity does fairly 
demand some consideration from those who bring 
it into being, one hundred years will not have passed 
~ s99Tbid. p. 286. 

141 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


before it will have been incontrovertibly demon- 
strated that Emancipation was more beneficial to 
the South than to the North. This statement is 
made with a full appreciation of the fact that the 
War, Emancipation and Reconstruction so reduced 
the South and checked its industrial development, 
that thirty years were required from the inception 
of the War to bring that section again up to the 
position it had reached in 1860, in point of wealth 
and industry. 

War and Emancipation can therefore be excused, 
but Reconstruction will ever remain an ineffaceable 
stain upon the conquerors. Yet, as an emetic some- 
times produces good which nothing else can bring 
about, so Reconstruction may in time be shown to 
have been not without its good. 


Just what might have been the effects of the at- 
tempt made by the Southern States to readjust the 
Negroes to the changed conditions of 1865 must 
now always remain a matter of surmise; for the 
differentiations of color, race and condition, which 
they attempted then to establish, were ruthlessly 
swept out of existence by military control and uni- 
versal suffrage followed by the Civil Rights Bill. 


But before considering that era of frantic sen- 
timentality concerning the African people in the 
United States, the period of Congressional Recon- 
struction, a little more light should be thrown upon 
the struggle made by the surviving soldiery of the 
Confederacy, led by Wade Hampton of South Caro- 
lina and others less well remembered, as Wright of 
Georgia, to support the policy of Seward and Presi- 


142 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


dent Johnson. Not unnaturally in so doing atten- 
tion will be concentrated to a very great degree 
upon the Scape Goat, The Hot Bed of Secession, 
The Prostrate State, although it was from without, 
if upon her borders, the record was preserved by one 
of her sons, an almost forgotten soldier and scholar 
of the Old South, in his tireless, patriotic and ab- 
solutely sincere and highly intelligent effort to men- 
tally avert the overthrow of the remnants of South- 
ern civilization, threatened in the advance of the 
black horde of freedmen marching to plunder, 
under the leadership of Sumner, Stevens and Wil- 
son and the half averted countenance of Grant. 

This description by a Southern man may seem 
possibly too comprehensive and severe, until we 
read the declaration of that American Negro most 
generally esteemed in the North in his day, the 
leader of the Negro race in America: 


“T felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related 
to my race was in a large measure on a false foundation, 
was artificial and forced. In many cases it seemed to me 
that the ignorance of my race was being used as a tool with 
which to help white men into office and that there was an 
element in the North which wanted to punish the Southern 
white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads 
of Southern whites.”20° 


How can the characterization be doubted when 
we remember Senator Wilson’s speech in Charles- 
ton and the fact that with such a record as he had 
and such a field to choose from, he was made Grant’s 
running mate, the Aaron for that Moses. 
~ 200Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 84. 

143 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The Southerner who preserved this record of the 
aspirations of the Old South was so identified with 
the political thought of the great State of North 
Carolina, that, like Andrew Jackson, whom he knew 
and asserted to be a South Carolinian, he also, though 
such, was thought to be a North Carolinian. But 
Daniel Harvey Hill was, on July 12, 1821, born in 
South Carolina, at Hill’s Iron Works, an iron manu- 
facturing establishment founded in the New Ac- 
quisition (later York District), by his grandfather, 
prior to the Revolutionary War, where cannon were 
forged for the American army. A graduate of 
West Point and a distinguished veteran of the Mexi- 
can War, in which he rose to the brevet of Major, 
he resigned from the United States army to em- 
brace the highest avocation a man may follow 
and became in 1849 a professor of mathematics at 
Washington College, Lexington, “the Athens” of Vir- 
ginia, and later, was put in control of the Military 
Institute of North Carolina; whence he entered the 
Confederate Army, served through the war with dis- 
tinction, rising to the rank of lieutenant general, 
and issuing from Charlotte, May, 1866, the first 
number of the monthly magazine, The Land We 
Love, published by him from that place until April, 
1869, through which he voiced the aspirations, hopes 
and resolves, in the main, of the disbanded forces 
of the Confederacy, probably, at that date constitut- 
ing seventy per cent or more of the white manhood 
of the South. If the magazine was modeled upon 
an English rather than an American type, it was 
the more representative of the South Atlantic States 


144 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


at that time. If forty per cent or more of its con- 
tents bore upon the recent war, considering the 
times and the conditions of the section upon which 
it was dependent for support, that was most natural. 


In it can be found not infrequent contributions 
from that Georgian said by Professor Trent to have 
been the one poet the War produced from the South; 
also some papers from that novelist of South Caro- 
lina whom Lewisohn has mentioned in his article 
on South Carolina, in The Nation in 1922; and one 
from that Northern adopted son of South Carolina, 
to whom the State owes the great institution, Clem- 
son College, for the aims of which General Hill 
strove so hard in his opening article on “Education.” 
Space will not admit of more than three extracts; 
the discussion by General Hill of education; an al- 
lusion to E. G. Lee’s “Maximilian and His Em- 
pire,” and a still briefer allusion to and endorsement 
of Wade Hampton and his policy concerning the 
freedmen. The first is the most important. After 
discussing the number of presidents from the South, 
including Lincoln and Johnson, eleven out of the 
seventeen, up to that time elected, coming from the 
South and an even greater proportion of secretaries 
of state and attorney generals, General Hill indi- 
cates, that when business ability was desired, as in 
the offices of secretary of the treasury and post- 
master general, the situation was at once reversed, 
and thus proceeds: 


“The facts and figures above have been given in warning, 
not in boastfulness. The pride which we might have felt 
in the glories of the past is rebuked by the thought that 


145 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


they were purchased at the expense of the material pros- 
perity of the country; for men of wealth and talents did not 
combine their fortunes, their energies and their intellects to 
develop the immense resources of the land of their nativity. 
What factories did they erect? What mines did they dig? 
What foundries did they establish? What machine shops 
did they build? What ships did they put afloat? Their 
minds and their hearts were engrossed in the struggle for 
national position and national honors. The yearning desire 
was for political supremacy and never for domestic thrift 
and economy. Hence we became dependent upon the North 
for everything from a lucifer match to a columbiad, from a 
pin to a railroad engine. A state of war found us without 
the machinery to make a single percussion cap for a sol- 
dier’s rifle, or a single button for his jacket. The system 
of labor which erected a class covetous of political distinc- 
tion has been forever abolished; but the system of educa- 
tion based upon it is still unchanged and unmodified... 
The old method of instruction was never wise; it is now 
worse than folly—’tis absolute madness. Is not attention 
to our fields and firesides of infinitely more importance to 
us than attention to national affairs? Is not a practical 
acquaintance with the ax, the plane, the saw, the anvil, 
the loom, the plow and the mattock vastly more useful to 
an impoverished people, than familiarity with the laws of 
nations and the science of government? . . . All unconscious 
of it though most of us may be, a kind providence is work- 
ing in the right way for the land we love. As a people we 
specially needed two things. We needed the cutting off the 
temptation to seek political supremacy, in order that our 
common school, academic and collegiate training should be 
directed to practical ends. . . . The state of probation, pupil- 
age, vassalage, or whatever it may me called in which we 
have been placed by the dominant party in Congress is we 
believe intended by the Giver of every good and perfect 
gift to give us higher and nobler ideas of education and the 
duties of educated men. . . . Again we needed to have man- 
ual labor made honorable. And here a kind Providence has 
brought good out of evil. . . God is now honoring manual 


146 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


labor with us, as he has never done with any other nation. 
It is the high born, the cultivated, the intelligent, the brave, 
the generous, who are now constrained to work with their 
own hands. Labor is thus associated in our minds with all 
that is honorable in birth, refined in manners, bright in 
intellect, manly in character and magnanimous in soul.... 
Now that labor has been dignified and cherished we want it 
to be recognized in our schools and colleges. . . . The peasant 
who would confine the teachings of his son to Machiavelli’s 
Discourse ‘On the Prince’ or Fenelon’s ‘instruction to his 
royal pupils,’ would be no more ignoring his rank and sta- 
tion than are our teachers ignoring the condition of the 
country. Is the law of nations important to us who constitute 
nor state, nor colony, nor territory? Is the science of 
mind useful to us just now, when our highest duty is to 
mind our own business? Will logic help us in our reason- 
ing whether we are in or out of the Union? Will the flow- 
ers of rhetoric plant any roses in our burnt districts? 
. . - - We want on the contrary a comprehensive plan of in- 
struction, which will embrace the useful rather than the 
profound, the practical rather than the theoretic; a system 
which will take up the ignorant in his degredation, en- 
lighten his mind, cultivate his heart, and fit him for the 
solemn duties of an immortal being; a system which will 
come to the poor in his poverty and instruct him in the 
best method of procuring food, raiment and the necessaries 
of life; a system which will give happiness to the many, and 
not aggrandizement to the few, a system which will foster 
and develop mechanical ingenuity and relieve labor of its 
burden; which will entwine its laurel wreath around the 
brow of honest industry and frown with contempt upon 
the idle and worthless.’’21 


Is it surprising that a man who thus exhorted the 
South in that day and hour should have been con- 
demned by both Sumner of Massachusetts and Pol- 
lard of Virginia? 

Thames DE. Hill, The Land We Love, Vol. I, p. 8. 
147 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


For three years, the worst in the history of the 
South, he kept his magazine before the people of 
South with a circulation of 12,000 copies and agents 
in every Southern State and in addition in New 
York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California. He 
never gave up the fight and in the year of his death 
saw his dream come true, but he did not get that 
support his cause would have entitled him to par- 
ticularly expect from the then leading port of the 
South Atlantic. For even a devoted citizen of 
Charleston must admit, that Charleston, by such evi- 
dences as exist, was rather cold to this voice of the 
South. For a few months Burke and Boinest were 
the agents in that city, then no names appear as 
representatives in the greatest city of the South, 
with the exception of New Orleans; while, at 
little places in South Carolina, Mayesville, Edge- 
field, Society Hill and Kingstree, the agents held on 
to the end, faithful unto death. But in Charleston, 
within one month from the suspension of The Land 
We Love, a new Southern magazine was launched, 
The XIX Century, edited by F. G. DeFontaine, dis- 
tinctly lighter, and, as events indicated, with less 
lasting power. 

Returning to General Hill’s magazine, if manual 
and industrial training was a hobby and if his crit- 
icism of the former political training and lack of 
industrial enterprise was too sweeping; yet in his 
columns was afforded space for the most interesting 
illustration of what that political training could 
flower into, which can be found anywhere in the 
printed page in the United States. This is a sweep- 


148 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ing statement itself; but if the highest type of cul- 
tivated diplomat, thoroughly conversant with the 
haute politique will read and ponder “Maximilian 
and His Empire” contributed by Gen. E. G. Lee, Feb. 
1867, he would be curious to know who this Gen. 
E. G. Lee was and what were his opportunities for 
gathering the political knowledge which appears 
most interestingly spread with something of the as- 
surance of a political seer, as time has shown. 


E. G. Lee was a Virginian, only a _ brigadier. 
Born at Leeland, May 25, 1835, a graduate of Wil- 
liam and Mary College, he served under Stonewall 
Jackson in the Valley campaign. Forced by ill 
health to withdraw from military service between 
1863 and 1864, he was, in the latter part of the 
last mentioned year, sent to Canada on secret service 
for the Confederate Government, just about the 
time at which Blair approached the officials of the 
Confederacy, according to Alex. H. Stephens, Vice 
President of the Confederacy, aiming to bring 
about— 


“a secret military convention between the belligerents with 
a view of preventing the establishment of a French Empire 
in Mexico by the joint operation of the Federal and Con- 
federate armies in maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine. 
In this way (writes Mr. Stephens) Mr. Blair thought, as 
Mr. Davis stated to me, a fraternization would take place 
between the two armies and peace be ultimately obtained by 
a restoration of the Union without the subjugation of the 
Southern States.’’202 


202News and Courier, May 13, 1874. 
149 


THE SLAVE TRADE 
In his Lincoln, Mr. Stephenson says: 


“While the amendment (abolishing slavery) was taking 
its way through Congress, a shrewd old politician who 
thought he knew the world better than most men, that 
Montgomery Blair, Senior, who was father to the Post- 
master General, had been trying on his own responsibility to 
open negotiations between Washington and Richmond. His 
visionary ideas, which were wholly without the results he 
intended have no place here. And yet this fanciful episode 
had a significance of its own. Had it not occurred; the Con- 
federate Government probably would not have appointed 
commissioners charged with the hopeless task of approaching 
the Federal Government for the purpose of negotiating peace 
between ‘the two countires.’ ” 


Just what was really happening in the world of 
politics in these dying days of the Confederacy may 
possibly never be known with any degree of exact- 
ness. The play of politics, not only in the United 
States; but around the world was quick and varied 
but very obscure. Mr. Stephenson, the most inter- 
esting and thoughtful observer of Lincoln’s career 
attaches very slight importance to Blair’s negotia- 
tions with the Confederacy; but more to the prior 
negotiations of Gilmore and Jacquess, even going so 
far as to assert, on the authority of Nicolay and Hay, 
that Davis had said in his interview with them: 


“You have already emancipated nearly two millions of our 
slaves; and if you will take care of them, you may emanci- 
pate the rest. I had a few when the war began. I was of 
some use to them; they never were of any to me.’’203 


Nicolay and Hay do assert that Jacquess asserted 
that Davis so stated; but they also give Davis’s 
" 28§tephenson, Lincoln, p. 398. 

150 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


account of the incident which he published in his 
“Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.” 
In this we find no such assertion by Davis and on 
the contrary the following: 

“Mr. Gilmore addressed me and in a few minutes con- 
veyed the information that the two gentlemen had come 
to Richmond impressed with the idea that the Confederate 
Government would accept a peace on the basis of a recon- 
struction of the Union, the abolition of slavery and the grant 
of an amnesty to the people of the States as repentant crim- 
inals. ... The impudence of the remarks could only be 
extenuated because of the ignorance displayed and the pro- 
fuse avowal of the kindest motives and intentions.’’2°4 

From this Mr. Davis proceeds to discuss the ap- 
pointment of commissioners to Canada about the 
middle of 1864, their failure and the mission of Mr. 
Blair in December. Gen. E. G. Lee’s name is not 
among the commissioners, as stated, nor is there any 
reference to his mission in The Rise and Fall. But 
his article in The Land We Love” appearing in 1867 
shows a knowledge and understanding of politics 
enveloping ‘Maximilian and His Empire,” viewed 
from the standpoint of the Confederate States, Louis 
Napoleon, and Wm. H. Seward, most interesting. 
This forgotten and youthful Virginian graduate of 
the oldest college in the United States, in the dis- 
cussion of a matter in which he does not mention 
himself, must have had sources of information, 
which he does not reveal. His admiration for an 
opponent, Seward, is unrestrained. His contempt 
for Louis Napoleon is expressed with a refinement 
that imparts to it a greater force; and altogether as 


24 Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of Confederate Govt., V. 2, p. 610. 
25Gen. D. H.. Hill, The Land We Love, Vol. II, No. IV, p. 1. 


151 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


he passes from the stage an unreconstructed “‘Rebel,” 
dying even before Virginia shook off the grip of the 
blacks, he carries with him to the grave some his- 
tory, which if more fully revealed might have added 
interest to Blair’s mission. At all events, if Gen- 
eral Hill asked— 


“Is not attention to our fields and firesides of infinitely 
more importance to us than attention to national affairs?’’2°* 


he yielded space and advanced to the front page of 
his magazine one best fitted to illustrate—‘Audi 
alteram partem.” | 

A little later in an editorial praising Generals 
Hampton and Wright, Hill says: 


“So far as we have been able to ascertain every Southern 
newspaper edited by a Confederate soldier, has followed the 
lead of these distinguished officers. The prominent idea 
held out by Generals Hampton and Wright, is that the 
freedman is to be trained to feel that he is a Southern man, 
identified with the South in its interests, its trials and its 
suffering. He is to be taught to feel that he is no alien 
upon the soil, but that this is his country and his home.’ 


In the elections of 1868, however, Congressional 
Reconstruction was overwhelmingly triumphant 
throughout the South and, with a fringe of whites, 
a black pall was thrown over the region. 

So determined were the ruling politicial leaders 
of that day, to enforce their will upon a crushed and 
impoverished people, that in South Carolina in 1870, 
to enforce the provisions of legislation for social 
equality, these alien law makers did not hesitate to 


MOTH. TY OL NG, Lehi Des Oa 
“iTbid. Vol, III, p. 85, No. 1, 


152 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


abrogate the elementary rule of the criminal law, 
which provides that the accused shall be deemed in- 
nocent until proven guilty, and so shaped the legisla- 
tion, of the Civil Rights Act, that any one accused 
of violating its strict and far reaching provisions, 
on failure to prove his innocence of the charge, be- 
came liable to a fine of one thousand dollars and 
also imprisonment in the State penitentiary for five 
years at hard labor, which was increased to six 
years upon failure to pay the fine. Any one aiding 
or abetting in the infraction of the law was liable to 
a term of three years in the State penitentiary, with 
the loss of the right to vote or hold office.?°* 


Now, it was while men’s minds in South Carolina 
were intensely agitated by the immense sweep of 
this act, that the whites of one of the religious de- 
nominations of this State found presented for their 
consideration, what was deemed by many of the 
various denominations as the entering wedge for 
the removal of distinctions between the races in the 
establishment of religious equality. 


With regard to equality between men, it has been 
declared that there are at least four clearly dis- 
tinguished connotations attached to the word, and a 
great variety of shades in each. These four con- 
notations of equality are: 

“1. Social equality, the tests of which are that we can in- 
vite each other to meet our friends in our homes without 


any thought of condescension or patronage and that our 
sons and daughters may freely intermarry... . 


2. Political equality, which is confined to the common 
possession of a vote.... 


28Statutes, S. C. Vol. 14, p. 386. 
153 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


38. Religious equality, which consists in common access to 
religious privileges on the fulfilment of the conditions pre- 
scribed by the church or the religious bodies. 


4, Equality before the law, where the law courts are open 
to all alike for the protection of person and property.” 


The South Carolina law of 1865 gave to all the 
Negroes the right to sue and be sued, and to re- 
ceive protection under the law in their persons and 
property, and therefore apparently the law courts 
were opened to all alike; but whether the Negroes 
thereby obtained a right to trial by a jury of their 
peers is a question. : 

As to those members of the colored race possess- 
ing seven-eighths or more of Caucasian blood, as far 
as law could make them, they were white. 

Reconstruction attempted to extend to all of the 
colored race what had been extended to this portion; 
and now a portion were applying for religious 
equality. 

The question was whether there was any distinc- 
tion between religious and social equality? 

That depends upon the estimate of each individual 
as to what “The Church” is. 

If it is in truth and fact a divine institution, then 
the necessity of subjecting it to those regulations 
which experience has proven most expedient, for 
the proper adjustment of civil relations, is not very 
clearly apparent. 

If it is not a divine institution, then it is a social 
organization, no matter how high the plane upon 
~ 28 Darragh, Contemporary Review, Jan. 1902, p. 100. 

154 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


which it is operated, and religious equality brings 
in its train social equality. 

The attempt of British divines, face to face with 
the color question in South Africa, to readjust the 
religious views of the fifties, directed at people 
mainly outside their own doors and to justify the re- 
fusal to extend religious equality to the blacks in 
the Dominions, on the professed ground that there 
is not complete spiritual equality among men and 
that the final award for the use cannot be made a 
basis for the adjustment of earthly relations, moves 
somewhat limpingly, and, in lucidity, falls far be- 
low the utterance of that profound Negro, who has 
so clearly set forth the rights of his race in America, 
in the following declaration: 


“The Negro has a God ordained right to protest against 
his exclusion from means of self support. He has equal 
right to protest when deprived of legal and civil justice, 
or when the opportunity of knowledge or sober living is 
denied him. He has no just cause of complaint, however, 
when excluded from social intercourse with the white race, 
for the obvious reason that mankind does not mingle on 
terms of social equality—a fact as true of black men as of 
white. Nor is Negro exclusion from membership in white 
churches a trespass on Negro rights, for after all, a church 
is neither more nor less than a social family.’’21° 


Of the Negro who made this sane well balanced 
pronouncement it is fitting that a white South Caro- 
linian should have something to say, although he 
has been absolutely ignored by the most cultivated 
members of his race. 


2100Thomas, The American Negro, p. 298. 
155 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


As we shall later note DuBois, who today comes 
nearer being recognized as the leading Negro of 
America than any who can be mentioned, has claimed 
that: 


“the greatest stigma on the white South is ... that when 
it saw the reform movement growing and even in some 
cases triumphing, and a larger and larger number of black 
voters learning to vote for honesty and ability, it still pre- 
ferred a Reign of Terror to a campaign of education, and 
disfranchised Negroes instead of punishing rascals.’’11 


In 1874 in South Carolina, Judge John T. Green, 
a Republican, was a candidate for governor 
against D. H. Chamberlain. Green was a South 
Carolina Unionist, a lawyer of ability against whom 
it was impossible to find anything to hang a charge 
on. Chamberlain was the most brilliant of all the 
carpet-baggers and after he defeated Green and be- 
came governor of South Carolina he did turn to a 
great extent against the rottening thieves who had 
raised him to that position. His opposition to black 
Whipper most dramatically expressed, flashed all 
over the United States, when that Northern born 
Negro was a candidate for judicial honors, in the 
piquant phrase—“The civilization of the Puritan 
and the Cavalier is in danger’—made this Union 
soldier from Massachusetts almost a type of the 
fighting reformer, and there was need of such, al- 
though, as DuBois claims: 


“it is certainly highly instructive to remember that the 
mark of the thief which dragged its slime across nearly 


i ee eaig' Reconstruction and Its Benefits, Am. Hist. Rev. Vol. XV, 
» DP. : 


156 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


every great Northern State and almost up to the presidential 
chair could not certainly in those cases be charged against 
the vote of black men.’’?12 

But when Chamberlain found, two years later, 
that in spite of his attack on those of his supporters 
of whom he was certainly entitled to declare that 
they were worse than he was, he nevertheless could 
not be the leader of what was best, he went back to 
the rotten element where, as the best of whites and 
blacks claimed in 1874, he always could be found 
when it suited his purpose; for the great mental 
gifts of the man made him prefer to reign in hell 
than serve in heaven. The fight against him was 
in 1874 led by Comptroller General Dunn, a Repub- 
lican from Massachusetts. The candidates named 
by the Independent Republicans were Judge Green, 
a white South Carolinian, and Martin R. Delany, a 
Negro from the North, for governor and lieutenant 
governor. Allusion has been made to Delany be- 
fore. He was born in Charleston, Virginia, in 1812, 
the child of a free Negro mother by a slave father. 
He was the recipient of an education which en- 
abled him to support himself and achieve some dis- 
tinction. He had resided in Pittsburgh for some 
time; had been in partnership with Fred Douglass; 
had founded the first colored total abstinence soci- 
ety; had moved to Canada and from there led a 
party of black explorers through a part of Africa, 
for which he had been noticed by the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society of Britain about the year 1859; 
and, returning to America, had served in the North- 
ern army with a commission. 

2122Tbid. p. 790. 


157 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


By General J. B. Kershaw of South Carolina, who 
with Wade Hampton and General McGowan all sup- 
ported the nominees, his absolute honesty was tes- 
tified to. 

Every effort was made by the bulk of the whites 
to support this attempt of the most honest of the 
Negroes and Republican whites to put honest men 
in office, Hampton going so far as to declare in the 
public prints over his signature: 

“IT look upon it as the imperative duty of every good citi- 
zen whatever may have been his own previous predilection 
to sustain heartily the action of that convention (of the 
whites); for our only hope is in unity. The delegates to 
that convention set a noble example of patriotism when they 
sacrificed all political aspirations, all personal considera- 


tion, and all former prejudice for the single purpose and 
in the sole hope of redeeming the State.,’’213 


Most of the notorious Negro leaders supported 
Chamberlain, R. B. Elliott being made chairman 
of Chamberlain’s Executive Committee; but a great 
number under Congressman R. H. Cain, Ransier 
and others, less notorious than Elliott and Whipper 
and not as gifted, stood staunchly for honest govern- 
ment. Cain went so far as to state that Green, 
~ who lacked very little of selection in the Republican 
convention which nominated Chamberlain, could 
have easily obtained the few votes necessary for 
such, as they had been offered his supporters at a 
comparitively small price; but that he and his 
friends had refused to purchase them. He also 
called to the attention of an audience of some thou- 
aN Ge ane Courier, October 27, 1874. 

158 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


sands in Charleston that the white judge he had 
voted for as mayor in 1865 was presiding over a 
meeting supporting this effort of black Republicans 
to secure good government. But the most striking 
fact that the meeting developed was the entrance 
into politics of the profoundest thinker the Negro 
race has ever produced, William Hannibal Thomas, 
author a quarter of a century later of that remark- 
able book—‘“‘The American Negro—What He Was, 
What He Is, and What He May Become.” Thomas 
had just reached his 31st year. At the close of the 
War between the States, while the harpies black and 
white in 1865 were winging their way Southward, 
a wounded United States soldier, he was lying in a 
hospital, with his right arm amputated above the 
elbow, having volunteered at the outset and rising 
to the rank of sergeant. Upon his discharge, 
after five months treatment, for three years he was 
a student of theology, going to Georgia in 1871 to 
teach. He moved to Newberry, South Carolina, in 
1873 and was admitted to the bar in January, 1874. 
As a delegate from Newberry he supported the 
movement for reform. During the absence of the 
committee on credentials, he was invited to address 
the convention. It was reported: 

“He made a stirring address in which the Bond Ring 
was effectually shown up. It was time that a stop should 
be put to crime and fraud in the State. It was time that 
the country should understand that the citizens of the 
South demanded peace and good government. It was a 
fallacy to say that in this movement, the Republicans of the 
State were abandoning their party principles. The plain 


truth was that the people in their might intended to rise 
and shake off the shackles of slavery and political bondage. 


159 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The colored people had given evidence of their earnestness 
by asking their white fellow citizens to join them in this 
effort. Intelligence and respectability must rule in the fu- 
ture and the colored race must see to it that they were 
educated up to the standard. By harmonizing it was not 
meant that either race should give up its party principles. 
It meant only that both the majority and the minority 
should have fair representation in the government and there 
could be no permanent peace and prosperity until this was 
established. Ninety-nine years ago the American people 
had rebelled against the British Government because they 
were taxed without representation. How could they expect 
a large minority to submit to this now? Our white friends 
must help us heartily. They must not approach us with 
gloves on. They must convince us that they are in earnest 
and will join us in the effort to reform the government and 
purify the State. I believe they are in earnest in their 
professions this time and it remains for us to receive their 
proffered help in the same spirit in which it is tendered. 
Beyond a doubt in four or six years the white race will be 
in a majority in this State. It is bound to come to this and 
if we show now that we are willing to share the government 
with them, we will get the same from them when the white 
majority shall have reached and passed the colored vote. It 
is common sense to do this nothing more. He heartily urged 
upon his race the necessity of working for Reform. He said 
he had been in the Union army in the late war but he for 
one was ready to shake hands across the bloody chasm and 
forget the past and unite with the Conservatives in secur- 
ing wealth and properity for the State.’’214 


This utterance seems to have won for him a posi- 
tion upon the committee on platform of five white 
and six colored members, one of the latter Cain, a 
congressman; yet Thomas was selected to submit 
it to the convention. Except in minor particulars 
it was the same as that which the convention nomi- 
ERAT COs ober 8, 1874. 

160 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


nating Chamberlain had framed, a not unreasonable 
platform for a Negro to support in 1874 in South 
Carolina, although scarcely acceptable in all its 
planks to the whites. In a total vote cast of 149,- 
221, Judge Green was defeated by a majority against 
him of 11,585. Yet the strength of the vote cast 
against him was not without its effect upon the 
brilliant Chamberlain, who, from that time, shed his 
former skin and became a reformer. 

How far a question which just about this time 
arose in the Episcopal Church may have affected 
political conditions is not to be asserted positively ; 
but that it did affect the minds of whites and blacks 
can hardly be doubted, for, to not a few it was, above 
all, a religious question. And a religious question, 
to not a few, calls for sacrifice. 

In the year 1875 there was presented in the Dio- 
cesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of South Carolina the application of a 
colored congregation for admission into union with 
the Convention, which application was referred to 
a committee to be appointed by the bishop to ex- 
amine into and report upon in the following year. 

In the minds of many men in the Southern States 
the admission of Negro delegates involved conse- 
quences which might be far reaching and this was 
very plainly presented in one of the two reports 
presented in 1876. This report opposing admission 
presented the matter in these words in part: 

“The members of this congregation with very few ex- 


ceptions are mulattoes, many of whom were free before the 
war and were known as a peculiar class in our community, 


161 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


owning slaves themselves and generally avoiding intercourse 
with those who were entirely black. Some of this class had 
established with their former masters and among our white 
people generally reputations for integrity and civility... 
The females of this class sometimes held relations with white 
men which they seemed to consider and respect, very much 
like, if not truly marriage. The results of such associations 
are numerous in our streets. It is this class in which mis- 
cegenation is seen and which tempts to miscegenation. If 
miscegenation should be encouraged among us, then this 
class should be cherished and advanced.,’’215 


The mover of this report might have gone fur- 
ther. He might have shown the evidences of inter- 
ests in the record office, upon the part of white men 
by deed and will from time to time, in the recogni- 
tion, to some extent, of the claims on paternity. 
How powerful this appeal could become to some is 
evidenced most strikingly in a will made as far 
back as 1814,?1° and the value, therefore, of this 
presentation at the Convention lay in the fact that 
it turned attention full upon that phase of this ques- 
tion which Southern white men are most apt to 
ignore. 

The imagination of the average Southern white 
man does become intensely excited over any intima- 
tion of that form of intercourse between the races 
which is most distasteful and repugnant to the 
whites, but from which there is the least likelihood of 
miscegenation to any perceptible degree. The imag- 
ination of the Southern white man is not, however, 
keenly alive to the steady, continuous progress, al- 
most inevitably resulting from the presence side by 


218Journal Diocesan Oonvention, 8S. 0. 1876, p. 25. 
6Probate Court Charleston, Will Book—L., p. 518. 


162 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


side in one section of great numbers of the two 
races. Yet if miscegenation is a danger, it is not 
less so while proceeding in the way in which it is 
most insidious and least shocking to the whites. 

To the educated moral mulatto this determined 
opposition by those who sought or were willing to 
accept joint political action, must have created dis- 
trust. When to that, violence grew sufficiently to 
bring from Jefferson Davis denunciation, it is not 
surprising that a man of the brilliancy and political 
astuteness of Chamberlain should have made him- 
self an immense power in South Carolina and drawn 
to himself a following which it took every effort of 
the whites to overthrow. 

Indeed, without Wade Hampton, it could not have 
been effected. Ina convention of 1876, of 165 mem- 
bers, the leader of the Straightout faction could not 
gather more than 42 votes.7*7 But in August of the 
same year when Hampton?"® threw the weight of 
his personality in its favor, by 82 to 65, the policy 
was adopted. It is an interesting fact that while 
the colored men W. J. Whipper and R. B. Elliott, 
Cardozo, Gleaves and H. E. Haynes are all men- 
tioned, the name of W. H. Thomas appears in no 
history of Reconstruction that the writer has read. 

Cardozo, the Treasurer, was warmly championed 
by Chamberlain, who declared of this colored of- 
fical: 


“Let me tell you that if I knew that your suffrages would 
sink me so deep that no bubble would rise to tell where I 


went down, I would stand by F. L. Cardozo.’’219 
217Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, p. 343. 
218Tbid. p. 350, News and Courier, August 17, 1876. 
29Tbid. p. 364. 


163 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Chamberlain knew and R. B. Elliott, the brainiest 
of all his colored opponents, knew that it was uSse- 
less to try to array Negroes against such a friend 
of the colored brother as that; and Smalls, Cham- 
berlain’s friend, a good natured, bold mulatto, de- 
feated Swails for the chairmanship, by a vote which 
indicated what was to be thrown for Chamberlain 
as the gubernatorial nominee. Elliott therefore 
made terms and was named for attorney general. 

Yet during the exciting days of 1876 when both 
houses of representatives were meeting, it was W. H. 
Thomas upon whom the Republicans depended for 
brain work. He was made a member of the com- 
mittee on credentials and, as chairman, reported in 
favor of the seating of the Republican contestants 
carrying the majority of the committee with him, 
although opposed by T. E. Miller, an octaroon or 
quadroon of considerable intelligence, who asked 
for fifteen minutes to reply to Thomas. 

Miller later stated that he had refused to sign 
the report, because he thought that the Democratic 
contestees ought to have been heard. When he was 
beaten, he declared he had changed his mind, stating 
that it was their own fault, if they were not present, 
and announcing he was ready to sign the report. 
It was reported that Thomas had, upon this second 
‘ utterance, made an inflamatory speech; but no part 
of it was published by the paper so declaring, which, 
upon the next day’s report, announced that in the 
midst of the stormy session, Thomas offered a 
prayer.?”° 
Matyeetmne Courier, December 1, 1876. 


164 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Thomas was on the committee of Ways and Means 
and the Judiciary, and, until the collapse of the 
Republicans, seems to have been the individual most 
relied upon by the Speaker for all the serious work 
of the session. 


Contemporaneously with the overthrow of the 
Negro governments of South Carolina and Loui- 
siana, the report opposing admission of colored dele- 
gates to the Diocesan Convention was sustained. 


In 1879 the question came up again in a shape 
harder to resist and resting upon the example of the 
diocese of Virginia. The law-making power of 
South Carolina had, however, meanwhile enacted a 
statute making it— 

“Unlawful for any white man to intermarry with any 


Negro, mulatto, Indian or mestizo; or for any white woman 
to intermarry with any other than a white man.’?2?1 


Accordingly the lay delegates firmly opposed any 
union whatever, whether of clerical or lay members, 
with regard to the two races in the South. 

Now if it is borne in mind that not only Calhoun, 
whose influence upon political thought in South 
Carolina had for many years been all pervasive; but 
also the profundest student who has ever studied 
America, de Tocqueville, had condemned “all in- 
termediate measures” and declared that unless the 
whites remained isolated from the colored race in 
the South, there must come either miscegenation or 
extirpation, at no time could the forecast of the 
future of that section have been as gloomy as that 
which appeared in the Census figures of 1880. 

” 24Statutes 8. Or VoLn Ei pip. 8: 
165 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The white population of Louisiana, which even the 
war and its losses had only dropped a thousand or 
two below the colored, had increased by an addition 
of 92,189; but, in the same time, with Reconstruc- 
tion, the colored had been swelled 119,445, giving a 
colored majority of something approximating 30,000. 
In Mississippi, where the ante bellum Negro ma- 
jority of 84,000 had, by 1870, been reduced to 62,000, 
it had now risen to 206,090. But in South Carolina, 
with a smaller area and white population, the Negro 
majority had risen to 212,000. In the five South- 
ern States, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Miss- 
issippi and Louisiana, the gain of the white popu- 
lation of only one, Alabama, had been greater than 
that of the blacks. Under such conditions discus- 
sion of that which was upon the minds of all was 
almost unavoidable, especially as Southern thought, 
freed from the shackles in which slavery had bound 
it, was free to move in whatever direction it saw 
fit and, from the pen of George W. Cable of New 
Orleans, there appeared “The Grandissimes,” pub- 
lished in 1880 and “Madam Delphine,” in 1881, of 
which the color question constitutes what might be 
called the motif. 

The literary excellence of these works won the 
author a place in art and they were followed by 
other works of merit; but so strongly was the writer 
finally impressed with that which had first moved 
him to write, that in 1885 he dropped for a time the 
garb of fiction and voiced his belief in the necessity 
of a recognition of what he deemed a great wrong, 
through a brochure entitled “The Freedman’s Case 


166 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


in Equity.” To Cable, the portion of the race which 
was represented by the mulattoes and the quadroons 
made the strongest appeal; but he was not alone in 
the critical attitude he assumed toward the South. 
In the work of Judge Albion W. Tourgee, a North- 
ern soldier, who had staked his all on Reconstruc- 
tion, with criticism, was voiced, in “A Fool’s Er- 
rand” by “One of the Fools,’ something very much 
like despair. Later brooding, however, drew from 
this author a more critical and decidedly pretentious 
study, entitled ‘““An Appeal to Caesar,” a study of the 
Census of 1880, from which, with some reason, he 
prophesied a speedy Africanization of the South, 
and in which he called upon the inhabitants of that 
section to bring forth fruits meet for repentance 
while there was still time. 

“Certainly there was basis for the claim. At no 
time had the rate of increase of the blacks been so 
high as the Census disclosed in South Carolina, 
Mississippi and Louisiana in 1880. Yet the first 
named set herself resolutely against any relaxation 
of the rule of rigid separation of the races, and in 
1888 brought to a conclusion the discussion con- 
cerning the admission of clerical delegates to the 
Protestant Episcopal Convention, by a resolution 
reciting the “absolute necessity for the separation 
of the races in the diocese,’’?2? effected upon a basis, 
putting all subsequent decisions within the control 
of the lay delegates.?2° 

In the years in which it had been maintained in 
the South Negro supremacy had done more to de- 


222Journal Diocesan Pe ack 8S. C., 1888. 
22Tbid. 1891, p. 1 


167 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


stroy the belief of the bulk of the Northern public, 
as to the capacity of the race to assume the full 
duties of citizenship, than any argument of whites 
could have achieved. The following extracts from 
a letter of George W. Curtis at this date is interest- 
ing. Referring to conditions in the fifties, he 
writes: 


“IT was mobbed in Philadelphia and the halter was made 
ready for me and I was only protected by the entire police 
force merely because I spoke against slavery.’224 


With freedom of discussion assured, he now, in 
December, 1888, wrote: 


“TI am very much obliged by your letter of Nov., I do not 
think the feeling of this part of the country is precisely 
understood in your part. It is in a word this, that admit- 
ting the force of all that is said about Negro supremacy, the 
colored vote ought not to be suppressed and the advantages 
based upon it retained. Of course I do not say it should be 
suppressed. I am assuming that there is great reason in 
the remark that under the same conditions the people in 
the Northern States would do likewise, and I ask whether, 
under that assumption, the people of those States ought to 
expect to retain what they are not entitled to? It is un- 
reasonable to ask acquiescence in the suppression of legal 
votes, which makes the white vote in Mississippi count 
more than the white vote in Massachusetts or New York. 
An educational test would be of no avail in a community 
where color is the disqualification according to Mr. Grady 
and Mr. Watterson. I shall be very glad to hear from you 
and I should like to know the reply to the statement, that it 
is not fair to suppress the vote and retain the advantages 
based upon it.’’225 


24Geo. W. Curtis, Letter to Author, January 19, 1886. 
2>Tbid. December 6, 1888. 


168 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The reply of the individual to whom this letter 
was addressed may well be omitted, in the light of 
what follows. 


In 1889 two publications appeared from Southern 
sources most powerfully portraying the advantages 
of freedom of discussion and the inestimable value 
of that which Mr. Curtis had described as “the 
fundamental condition of human progress,’’—‘“the 
right of the individual to express his opinion on any 
and every subject.” The first publication was the 
careful, exact and searching analysis of the condi- 
tion of the mass of the blacks contained in “The 
Plantation Negro as a Freedman,” by Philip Alex- 
ander Bruce of Virginia. The second, the remark- 
able editorials of Carlyle McKinley, in The News 
and Courier, of Charleston, 8S. C., upon the impend- 
ing movements of the freedmen in the United States. 

With a prescience absolutely astounding, when we 
consider the only available source of information at 
that date, the Census of 1880, the same from which 
Judge Tourgee had drawn the figures upon which 
he based his gloomy prophecy of the speedy African- 
ization of the South, Mr. Carlyle McKinley wrote: 

“The Negro question and all questions growing out of it 
will be rendered one hundred fold more easy of prompt and 
right adjustment when the Negroes themselves are more 
equally distributed throughout the republic.?2° 

Differing in toto with the work of Judge Tourgee, 
which had unquestionably in some quarters pro- 
duced a profound impression and one which was not 
obliterated until the figures of the Census of 1890 

26News and Courier, July 8, 1889. 


169 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


were published, in 1889 Carlyle McKinley confi- 
dently declared: 


“The currents which are moving from nearly every part 
of the cotton belt towards the Mississippi basin will not 
stop there. The Southern States have already all the 
colored population that they want and more than they 
want. Future movements in the same direction must in- 
evitably extend beyond the cotton and cane fields of the 
region and being deflected around the northern borders of 
Texas spread into the vast prairie.country beyond or per- 
haps curve northward into the States bordering the Missis- 
sippi and its tributaries.”227 


About a month later the same paper in an editorial 
entitled—‘“‘The Dispersion of the Colored Popula- 
tion’—admirably outlined the true policy which 
should guide since the importation of slaves and 
slavery itself had been abolished: 


“The Negro Question, whatever it be, is properly a national 
question, it should be settled on a national basis. It can 
never be settled on any basis while the Negroes are con- 
centrated in one part of the country. The first interests of 
the South and especially of those Southern States where the 
Negroes are in a majority is to effect the general distribu- 
tion of the race more equally throughout both sections or to 
remove the excess of the colored population in the South to 
some part of the western territory which has not yet been 
occupied .... So far as the South is concerned, the Negro 
Question now is the question of how best to promote Negro 
emigration northward and westward.”228 


At the time of the publication of these editorials, 
the State of South Carolina was represented in the 
Senate of the United States by Wade Hampton and 
M. C. Butler. Both were members of families which 


227Tbid. 
*28Tbid. Aug. 20, 1889. 


170 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


had been identified with the history of the State of 
South Carolina from the Revolutionary War. Both 
belonged to the slave-holding planter class. Both 
had served with distinction in the Confederate War, 
rising respectively to the grades of lieutenant gen- 
eral and major general; the former. having es- 
tablished a record while in command of the cavalry 
of the Army of Northern Virginia, second to none, 
in handling that branch of the service. In addi- 
tion Hampton had, in his own State, been the leader 
of the whites in the great political struggle of 1876, 
in which the Negro government had been over- 
thrown, in which contest, he had been ably seconded 
by Butler. But the Hampton of 1867 had passed 
through many experiences since General D. H. Hill 
had commended his appeal, at that date, to the 
Southern Negro to consider the South as his home, 
and Green’s campaign of 1874 had probably con- 
vinced him that the bulk of the Negroes preferred 
the showy flashes of the characterless Elliott and 
Whipper to the sober honesty of Delany and Thomas. 
In the year that Gen. D. H. Hill, of South Carolina, 
died, B. R. Tillman pushed to completion Hill’s edu- 
cational view with the founding of Clemson; while 
to Senator Hampton was propounded the query 
which the editorials had suggested, concerning the 
diffusion of the Negroes: 


“Would any injury result to the South from an 
extensive exodus?” 

The reply from that one in the South best qualified 
to answer such a question might well stand also 
as the best reply to the inquiry propounded by 


171 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


George William Curtis to the author of this work, 
before alluded to. 

Hampton’s reply exhibited the broad statesman- 
ship of Paul Hamilton, Joseph Alston and Robert 
Barnwell in 1803, before South Carolina had been 
deluged with slaves, and the brave sincerity of 
Robert Y. Hayne, in 1818, 1827 and 1839. 


Hampton said: 


“An inconvenience, but no injury. We would gladly see 
the colored people move elsewhere, and we would be willing 
to suffer any reduction of representation that might result 
from their departure. It would deprive us of much of our 
labor and make it a little harder for the present generation, 
but it would be the salvation of the future.’’2?9 

Senator Butler then took up the matter, and in the 
early part of 1890 sought to have enacted by con- 
gress a bill providing: 

“That upon the application of any person of color to the 
nearest United States Commissioner, setting forth that he, 
she or they desire to emigrate from any of the Southern 
States and designating the point to which he, she or they 
wish to go, with a view to citizenship and permanent resi- 
deace in said country, and also setting forth that he, she 
or they are too poor to pay the necessary traveling ex- 
penses... That it shall be the duty of the Quarter 
Master General of the Army on receipt of such application, 
to furnish transportation to such.” .. . 230 

For the purpose of carrying out the provisions of 
this bill an appropriation of $5,000,000 was asked. 

The bill excited some interest. It received most 
naturally the unqualified support of Senator Hamp- 
ton, and it was also acceptable to Senator Vest of 


22Tbid. Aug. 22, 1889. 
230Tbid. Dec. 23, 1889. 


172 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Missouri, and other Southern men of prominence; 
but it was not only opposed by Northern and West- 
ern senators but also by one at least from the South, 
Senator Vance, of North Carolina, although the ar- 
gument of the latter was marked by neither strength 
nor depth of thought. On the other hand the argu- 
ment with which Senator Butler presented his bill 
deserves consideration at some length and is apt to 
receive it in the future. While presented in a dif- 
ferent style, it is comparable to the utterance of the 
great orator and debater of his State, Senator 
Hayne, upon somewhat the same subject in 1827. 


Senator Butler said: 


“TI shall confine myself to a dispassionate and simple state- 
ment of facts and of such reference to events, as candor 
and truth justify. ... To my mind it is too grave a sub- 
ject to be diverted by party considerations or confined within 
the narrow boundaries and limits of party lines. It is all 
pervading, momentous and important. .. Whoever con- 
cludes, that the quieting of the agitation which concerns the 
political status of the Negro would be a settlement of the 
race question, discloses, how little he knows of its magnitude 
and comprehensiveness and how superficially he looks at 
ed \ anaes 


Proceeding with his argument Butler suggested: 


“The inquiry will be made why should the Negro move out 
of the Southern States? He will not except on his own 
volition. There is nothing in this bill which coerces him 
or compels him to move. My answer, however, is that it 
would be for his own good and for the good of his white 
neighbors also. It cannot have escaped the attention of the 
most casual observer that where the Negro remains in large 
masses and exceeds in numbers their white neighbors, they 
not only do not advance, but actually retrograde. It is not 
needful for any intelligent white man to read St. John’s 


173 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


dismal narrative of ‘The Black Republic of Hayti,’ or 
Bruce’s graphic story, ‘The plantation Negro as a Freeman,’ 
or Froude’s ‘Negro in the West Indies’, to establish the 
truth of the proposition. On the other hand, observation 
and experience convince us, that in regions of the South, 
where the whites are largely in the majority, the Negro is 
better off and the white man is better off. The Negro dresses 
better and is more intelligent and thrifty and the white man 
is more properous and progressive. ... It is conceded on 
all hands, that if the Negro is to attain the full statue of his 
manhood, if he is so become an independent self-reliant, 
self-respecting man, and be made fully competent to dis- 
charge all the high responsibilities and duties of life, he 
must finally rely upon himself, he must elevate himself in the 
moral social and industrial scale by his own exertions, by 
his own self-assertion. To do this effectually, he must have 
a fair chance in an open field. Can he be expected to ac- 
complish this; can it be expected of him under the shadow 
and amid the scenes of dependence and inferiority which 
enshroud him in the surroundings of his former debased 
condition? Take him away from them and allow his pulse 
of freedom to throb unobstructed by the memories and asso- 
ciations of his servile bondage. I am not one of those 
who believe in the total, hopeless depravity of the Negro 
race. I believe that there are great possibilities in store for 
him. I do not undervalue the worth of the labor of the 
Negro in what was accomplished in the way of the material 
development of the South. All that I mean to say is but for 
that kind of labor, the South would have been far ahead 
of her present development. . . Nor do I underestimate the 
obligations we are all under to the race for the fidelity and 
most praiseworthy conduct during our depleting civil strife. 
Whatever fate the future may have in store for him noth- 
ing can deprive the Negro of this record; nothing can destroy 
or obliterate the strong ties of affectionate kindness between 
him and his former owner. .. I repeat Sir it is for his good 
and the good of his future generations, as well as the good 
of his former master and his descendants, that I would 
have him more generally distributed among the great mass 


174 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of his white fellow citizens, from whose energy and thrift 
and enlightment and progress he can gather hope and in- 
spiring example in his struggle for an equal chance in 
life. ... It is not an uncommon thing to hear men say 
—‘Let the negro alone; he makes a good peasant class; he is 
the best laborer we can get for the cotton fields, etc.’ Do not 
all such forget that there is no such thing as a peasant class 
under our form of government? Do they not forget that the 
Negro is a free American citizen, entitled by virtue of his 
citizenship, if on no other account, to equality before the law 
with the foremost citizens of the land, equality of oppor- 
tunity, equality of rights .... Is it not about time, Mr. 
President that the thinking men of this country, men who 
have some concern for the future of coming generations as 
well as the temporary triumph of party should meet upon 
the common plane of the general good and dispose of this 
question fairly and humanely? ... I should welcome such 
a day as a new era in our history, from which to date new 
hopes for the perpetuity of a constitutional republic.’’231 


It is hardly necessary to state that the bill did not 
pass. With the exception of his colleague, Senator 
Hampton, and Senator Vest, of Missouri, it scarcely 
received any support, and yet these Southern men 
recognized, more than thirty years ago, what is only 
now forcing itself upon the consciousness of the 
North, because the Negroes themselves have at last 
perceived the necessity of it. 

But what do the prosperous think of? At this time 
little or nothing was known of the two little white 
republics, the Transvaal and the Orange River Free 
State, except that they maintained themselves with- 
out assistance in the heart of South Africa, sur- 
rounded by millions of warlike African savages. To 
the author of this work it seemed in 1890 worth 


*s1Ibid. Jan. 17, 1890. 
175 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


while for the Northern statesmen and the Northern — 
public to inform themselves of the views and policies 
of these people, before they legislated for the South 
on matters pertaining to the Race Problem. These 
little peoples had had no contact with Southern men. 
They came from a different nationality. Would it 
not be well for our Northern brethren to study 
their methods before legislating for the South? 
The suggestion was presented to The New York 
World, then calling for ideas. But that great paper, 
under Mr. Pulitzer, could not see the value. Later, 
although conquered, as the South was, the Boers 
have made their views felt in the world. 

Was not an opportunity missed for obtaining help- 
ful information in advance of Bigelow’s White 
Man’s Africa? Was not his book an indication of an 
unexplored field? Did it not influence opinion in 
the north of the United States? 


176 


CHAPTER X 


As has been heretofore stated, George William 
Curtis, the most eminent representative of former 
abolition sentiment, at that date (1888), still alive in 
the United States, had propounded a query to the 
author concerning political advantages obtained 
through the possession of the suppressed vote swell- 
ing the electoral strength of the States, possibly com- 
pelled to suppress its exercise. 


Hampton, the most illustrious drs et ante and 
“one of the most distinguished leaders’’**? of the 
overthrown slavocracy, had, in his reply to a press 
interview, indicated how little desirous he thought 
the South was of retaining any advantage based on 
its possession, and his lieutenant, Butler, elaborat- 
ing the argument, had pressed for a diffusion of the 
Negroes throughout the United States. 


The fates gave Mr. Curtis the last word. 


In Harper’s Weekly in the early part of 1891 ap- 
peared an editorial entitled “A Sign of the Times.” 
It was in part as follows: 


“The associations, which under the general name of Farm- 
ers Alliance, are organized throughout the country, are a 
sign of the times not to be overlooked. They are the polit- 
ical form which is given to a feeling which is observable on 
all sides, extending quite beyond the circle of those who 
actually take part in such associations ... The main- 
spring of the movement is hostility to what is called the 
aristocracy of wealth. This hostility is due to the convic- 
tion that consolidated capital commands special privileges, 
which are denied to the greatest industrial interest of the 


St ha The American Commonwealth, Revised Edition (1910) p. 503, 


17% 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


country, that of agriculture ... The most striking illustra- 
tion of this movement was that in South Carolina. A 
Farmers Convention composed of white Democrats, who 
were opposed to what they called the aristocratic Democratic 
Ring, made the present Governor ‘Ben’ Tillman, the Dem- 
ocratic candidate. His main appeal was to the poor 
whites or ‘buckra’, as they are called, and despite the fact 
that he was opposed by Judge Haskell, a representative of 
the old governing class, who had the good will of most of 
the colored leaders, Mr. Tillman was overwhelmingly elected 
. .. Tillman’s election, which was a signal defeat of the old 
Democratic regime in South Carolina was followed by the 
defeat of the chief representative of that regime, Senator 
Hampton, for reelection to the Senate... One striking 
incident in the campaign was the speech of a colored Repub- 
lican, who opposed Judge Haskell and who said that Till- 
man had made both the whites and the Negroes readers and 
thinkers.’’283 


The colored man to whom Mr. Curtis referred was 
the Rev. Richard Carroll, of Orangeburg, later of 
Columbia. 

In the early fall of the year 1890 he had, in a 
letter to the editor of The News and Courier, oppos- 
ing Negro excursions, given, in addition to the very 
sensible views he put forth concerning such, an in- 
dication that he was alive to the greatest need of his 
race and how best it might be met. Five yeare before 
Booker Washington came upon the stage and twenty- 
two before he saw the light, Carroll seems to have 
seen it and pointed to it as follows: 

“Our Northern friends are turning their attention to the 


needs of emigrants in the West. We should save money to 
buy homes while land is cheap.’234 


33H arper’s Weekly, January 31st, 1891. 
24News and Courier, September 15th, 1890. 


178 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


That Carroll was, at that date, a vigorous, origi- 
nal, independent thinker and speaker, will be indi- 
cated by a fuller description of the incident which 
Mr. Curtis alludes to above. 


Upon the division which occurred in South Caro- 
lina between the followers of Judge Haskell and 
Mr. Tillman, the Republican party in that State, 
mainly composed of Negroes, had begun to stir and 
a convention had been called of the leading colored 
men of the State to consider the advisability of en- 
dorsing Judge Haskell and supporting his candidacy, 
and, the delegates having assembled, a motion was 
made to leave the matter to.the Republican execu- 
tive committee. The resolution obtained support 
from many members in strong speeches. It was op- 
posed by one speaker. The following is the news- 
paper report of the speaker’s remarks: 


“The Rev. R. Carroll, of Orangeburg, could not approve 
leaving the matter to the Republican executive committee, 
because he knew the committee would endorse the Haskell 
ticket (How do you know?). Because one of the leaders told 
me so. I am here to oppose the colored people taking any 
action whatever. We have got what we have prayed for 
so long, a split in the Democratic party. Join one side now 
and we will grasp a shadow. Let the thing work. He 
believed Tillman ought to be elected (Voices—‘Oh No’). Well 
let me talk. Before Tillman was nominated, we were all Till- 
manites. (Voices—‘No, No’). We all rejoiced. We wanted 
his success. Now he has been nominated. Tillman has 
done us more good than any living man since the war. 
He made colored as well as white people thinkers and 
readers. Heretofore all Democrats went into office on 76 
and the Negro Question. Tillman came along and let the 
Negro alone (Voices—‘Hamburg, Ellenton’). He put people 
to thinking of other things than the Negro. He ought to 


179 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


be Governor, and if I was a white Democrat I’d cast 10,000 
votes to reward him. I am not afraid of Tillman. I’m 
afraid of the men who got into his waggon and were pulled 
into office by him. The white people are divided, but the 
moment that the Negro comes in, they will get together 
(applause). Both parties will turn on the Negro and he 
will have to run to the mountains... If you endorse 
Haskell I’ll enter politics with 100,000 others (‘Won’t vote 
for Tillman’). He’ll be governor just the same.’’235 


Although Carroll was in a minority, he fought the 
question to a vote, replying to the charges with 
vigorous thrusts and with regard to the claim that 
those whom Tillman represented were the lynchers 
of Negroes asking: ‘‘Were they not led by aristo- 
crats as well as common men?” 

In fact Carroll appreciated, in advance, what Mr. 
Curtis deeply interested as he was and keen observer 
also, never quite grasped, viz., that the dominant fac- 
tion, in South Carolina, did not intend to permit the 
Negroes to participate. And this was in fact the 
greatest fact of the Tillman movement and one 
which made it utterly unlike all apparently similar 
efforts in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and 
other Southern States. The head of the camel never 
having been permitted to enter in South Carolina, 
the difficulty experienced in the other States in re- 
moving the camel, when he had completely filled the 
tent, was never felt in South Carolina. 

In storming his way to place and power, Tillman 
unquestionably appealed to a class, the farming class, 
whom he declared constituted seventy-five per cent of 
the white population, and whom he also averred had 
" 26Ibid. October 16th, 1890. 

180 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


been discriminated against. But Tillman really 
had less prejudice against the old families of South 
Carolina than many who opposed his candidacy. 
His people before him had been identified with the 
soil of South Carolina for generations. His father 
had held Federal office under Andrew Jackson, and 
one of his ablest lieutenants, W. D. Evans, was, in 
1890, still living on the land originally granted his 
ancestor in the days of the province of South Caro- 
lina. 


Once established in power, Tillman was for all 
classes. 


But Mr. Curtis, clean and lovable man as he was, 
never could entirely free himself from the feeling 
that, as an abolitionist, he had felt toward the class 
which had led the South through the struggle in 
behalf of slavery. He had great hopes that the 
elevation of Tillman and the overthrow of the Hamp- 
ton regime meant a chance for the Negro to come 
back to some exercise, even if a restricted one, of 
the suffrage. He expected that there would be a 
marked difference in the feelings and sentiments of 
those whom Tillman led and those who had preceded 
them; and in a letter of Jan. 21, he thus exhibited 
it: 


“I do not know if you have seen a paper by the Rev. A. D. 
Mayo, who for ten years has been busily engaged in promot- 
ing education in the Southern States. He holds that the 
class which Tillman represents and not the old planting aris- 
tocracy is the real hope of the Southern country, and he 
makes a very strong statement.’’236 


236Geo. William Curtis, Letter to Author, Jan. 21st, 1891. 
181 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


But no class has any monopoly of selfishness and 
while it was most unfortunate for South Carolina, 
yet it was in accordance with human nature, that 
one of the first considerations of the class which had 
seized the reins of power in South Carolina in 1890, 
was to benefit its own class, by an attempt to per- 
petuate those very conditions which for eighty years 
had done more to injure South Carolina than any 
one thing in her history, and which her wisest sons 
had unavailingly opposed, viz., the retention of a 
mass of ignorant, agricultural laborers, reduced as 
close to the condition of serfs of the soil as it was 
possible in each period to accomplish; for this is 
what the law, enacted in most of the cotton States 
at that date, did in fact bring about, by taxing out 
of existence those agencies which might have re- 
lieved the State of considerable numbers of Negroes. 

The South Carolina Act, passed December, 4, 
1891, can stand as typical of this legislation, which 
was based upon the determination of the white ag- 
riculturists of the Lower South, constituting as they 
did about seventy per cent of the white population, 
to hobble, well within their reach, cheap Negro labor. 
Coupled as the passage of such legislation was with 
the fierce declarations against black brutes, with 
which the perpetrators of such sought to excuse 
the numerous lynchings of this period, it was ap- 
parent that, while the vengeance was swift in over- 
taking the blacks who violated white women, the 
pound of cure was preferred to the ounce of pre- 
vention; and so, exposing their women to that risk 
which seemed inevitable with the tremendous Negro 


182 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


population which abounded in the South, the men 
who made the laws still clung to cheap Negro labor. 
It is true that as a whole, in the section covered even 
by South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Missis- 
sippi, the white population had gained upon the 
Negro population and was at this date but slightly 
inferior in numbers, amounting to 2,917,000 whites, 
to 2,966,000 Negroes, in this black belt; but just 
what proportion of whites were absolutely inde- 
pendent of the Negro agricultural laborer it would 
be difficult to estimate. That there were then and 
are now a very great number, who would profit to a 
very great degree by an assisted emigration of 
Negroes, and that these whites were of the class 
whose women folk necessarily were most exposed to 
the risk which a juxtaposition of such an immense 
mass of Negroes presented, growing race prejudice 
prevented the perception of, and the members of 
this class lent their influence to this injurious legis- 
lation formulated as follows: 


“No person shall carry on the business of emigrant agent 
in the State without first having obtained a license therefor 
from the State Treasurer. 

Section 2. That the term ‘emigrant agent’, as contem- 
plated in the Act, shall be construed to mean any person 
engaged in hiring laborers or soliciting emigrants in the 
State to be employed beyond the limits of the same. 

Section 8. That any person shall be entitled to a license, 
which shall be good for one year, upon payment unto the 
State Treasurer, for the use of the State, of one thousand 
dollars in each county in which he operates or solicits 
emigrants, for each year so engaged. 

Section 4. That any person doing the business of an 
emigrant agent without first having obtained such license 


183 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall 
be punished by a fine not less than five hundred dollars and 
not more than five thousand or may be imprisoned in the 
county jail not less than four months or confined in the 
State prison at hard labor not exceeding two years for each 
and every offense, within the discretion of the Court.’’287 


It is doubtful if the injury which had been in- 
flicted upon the South by the vicious Federal legisla- 
tion of 1868, had, in any way, been greater than by 
its checking the natural diffusion of the Negroes 
throughout the Union in consequence of their eman- 
cipation and the military overthrow of those oppos- 
ing such. 

The effect of the legislation of 1868 had been to 
direct and stimulate a movement to the South of 
Northern Negroes and white adventurers which 
banked up the Negro population there, taught all 
to consider themselves ladies and gentlemen, a fact 
which is still apparent in the apparel in which many 
attempt to perform heavy manual work; and, until 
they were disbanded in 1890, was most ludicrous, 
in their military aspirations, as the Kodak by John- 
son shows. 

The overthrow of Reconstruction in 1876, did to 
some degree produce diffusion and by the Census of 
1890 it became noticeable even in South Carolina, 
where the Negro population was densest, that while 
the numerical increase of the Negroes was still 
greater there than the whites, the rate of increase 
of the former had fallen below the latter. Yet in 
South Carolina the Negro population still exceeded 
the white by 226,296, a greater excess than appeared 
Su Sigitatuteslsocth Carolina, Vol. 20,—p. 1084. 


184 





NEGRO NATIONAL GUARDSMAN— SOUTH CAROLINA, 1890 
Product of Congressional Reconstruction 


‘ 
4 
he 7 
hy é 
» a 
a 
* 
a) 
. 
ot fot 
2 
’ \ 
3 
; i ‘ : 
7 e 
1 
— a ob > 2 
. 


sae 





LIBRARY | 
OFTHE 2 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


f - 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


even in Mississippi, a State of greater area and with 
a more numerous white population, where the ex- 
cess of the Negro population was but 197,698. 

Under such circumstances it was patent that leg- 
islation in either State which tended to restrain the 
egress of the Negroes, even if temporarily of indus- 
trial benefit to the land owners and agriculturists, 
was against the true interest of the State and the 
people, and, accordingly, in South Carolina, in the 
columns of ‘‘The Cotton Plant’, the organ of the 
South Carolina agricultural class of that date, the 
author of this work began an attack upon the law 
in a series of articles. 

Without asserting that it was in response to this 
agitation, it nevertheless is a fact that closely fol- 
lowing upon it, in 1893, the:law‘was amended by the 
addition of a clause in the nature of a,compromise, 
namely: de All is pie ah 


“That nothing in this act shall be construed to prevent 
emigrant agents operating in this State between the ist 
day of July and the 31st day of December of any year.’’238 


This amendment, permitting the opportunity for 
assisted removal of the Negroes during that half of 
the year when such was least liable to interfere with 
their contracts for labor, admitted of a gradual 
removal of numbers of them and was a concession to 
public opinion and political morality by those who, 
with their votes and influence, controlled the politi- 
cal situation. 

By 1890, it was scarcely to be doubted, that a 
great change in sentiment was taking place in the 
" 288Epid. Vol, 21, p. 429. 


185 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


world or rather in those three great countries which, 
from their position, were most able to effect the 
opinion of the world. In Great Britain, the United 
States of America and Germany the extravagantly 
liberal and humanitarian ideas, with regard to the 
race question, which had marked the twenty-five 
years preceding 1890, were giving way to some- 
thing which might be described by the word race- 
imperialism. In Germany it made its appearance 
in many forms, but more noticeably in the colonial 
ventures, which off the coast of East Africa were 
smeared with a recrudescence of the slave trade.”*® 
How it grew in that country and to what astounding 
lengths of caste culture it proceeded, would be beyond 
the scope of this study, but it might be mentioned 
that, by Paul Rohrback, without any credit to the 
author, Calhoun’s black ‘“‘substratum” theory was 
openly avowed as the basis of colonial expansion. 

Great Britain, with the Jameson raid and its 
sequellae, gave an illustration of race intolerance 
that shocked the world, but avoided the use of the 
black in conquering the white. 

In the United States it took shape in the various 
constitutional conventions in Southern States, aim- 
ing to disfranchise the bulk of the Negro vote. 

It was England, however, that altered the designa- 
tion of “The Brother in Black” to “The White Man’s 
Burden.” 

In every way in 1890 the Negro seemed to have 
failed. His profligacy was exaggerated, but in his 
profligacy he had betrayed Judge Tourgee. A study 
of the Census of 1890 by the author of this work 
“amNeibe and Courier, September 17th, 1890. 

186 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


indicated that in a total population of 62,620,000 in 
the United States, 45,770,000 were native whites; 
9,240,000 were foreign born whites; 6,339,000 were 
Negroes; 1,131,000 were mulattoes; 110,000 were 
Mongolians and 58,000 civilized Indians. 

Comparing the two sections: There were a little 
more than twice as many native born whites in the 
North and West asin the South. There were about 
twelve times as many foreign born whites and 
about seven times as many civilized Indians with 
fifty times as many Mongolians, but there were only 
one-twelfth as many Negroes and one-fifth as many 
mulattoes.?*° 


North & West South 


DEEIVOMEVRILES | io ccnc0 cc. - 2. oesese vce eetcs ee 31,150,000 14,620,000 
Rorcign Born. White -...2.2..0.....2022.0. 8,510,000 730,000 
emer ronmmnr ey, re et ee 489,000 5,850,000 
dhe aE, ALBUS ASE a fea 195,000 936,000 
Chinese & Japanese .....................----- 108,000 2,000 
RT TLAPO PENG UATIS 9 oo oooc lc. Levivcveccowsoavecs 51,000 7,000 


In the eight Southern States, South Carolina, 
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, 
Arkansas and Texas there were 6,162,000 whites to 
4,480,000 colored persons, and in the first six named 
of these 3,599,000 whites to 3,492,000 colored per- 
sons. By States the comparison was as follows: 

Whites Colored 


SVP Le Sh Wye TIA GLA A eS 462,000 688,000 
Eis Tey 2y Se Oe RE SS ete 978,000 858,000 
PNET C8 fo 0 Su Ou ory ce A a A lc Oe 224,000 166,000 
PME Ver ie Ge De RR See cae ee 833,000 678,000 
Ei Nigt ) TE ATS a1 dlls A aha Dis Bh Sy Ua a 544,000 742,000 
i lageqa hs) De Ep See sai aie Is BR BO Moat STP aa oe 558,000 559,000 


240Theo. D. Jervey, Migration of the Negroes, pp. 1-2. 
187 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


In the same year in which Tillman had risen to 
power in South Carolina, Mississippi had disfran- 
chised the great bulk of her Negro majority and, 
with his control of political affairs, Tillman set to 
work to accomplish the same thing in South Caro- 
lina. By 1895 he had succeeded in obtaining a 
constitutional convention and in that year it met. 

For almost two centuries the Negroes had been 
trained in slavery. Then for a decade they had 
enjoyed what was much more akin to unbridled 
license than liberty. For about twenty years suc- 
ceeding that they had been, by every device which 
could be conceived of, stripped of the exercise of the 
franchise and to a very great degree excluded from 
jury duty. The proposition was now to exclude the 
vast bulk of them legally from the franchise. It 
is interesting to consider and observe in what way 
they received the suggestion; for they were now ab- 
solutely without white aid, and dependent entirely 
upon such arguments as they themselves could ad- 
vance. There was no attempt to hide the purpose. 
It was openly avowed that the main purpose of the 
constitutional convention of South Carolina for 
1895 was to frame a law, by which the tremendous 
preponderance of the Negro electorate should be 
reduced to an inconsiderable minority. This had 
been accomplished in Mississippi, and the incon- 
sistency of the Emigrant Tax Law, restraining in 
the State those whom the law makers had to pro- 
tect the State from, escaped attention for the time. 

Blunt and rough as he was in his political utter- 


188 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ances, the prime mover for this convention, Senator 
B. R. Tillman, with a breadth of thought greatly to 
his credit, sought unceasingly to make it representa- 
tive of all factions, classes and conditions of the 
white population of the State and, when it finally as- 
sembled, it was found to be so. In addition it con- 
tained a sprinkling of Negroes, through the presence 
of six Negro delegates from two coast counties, 
where they were in such overwhelming numbers as 
to preclude their exclusion by any methods afforded 
by existing laws. 

The attitude, behavior and utterance of these six 
Negroes in this convention, in the State where 
twenty years previously the members of their race 
had held their most pronounced legislative orgy and 
to which they now came, to what they must have 
realized were the political obsequies of the race, had 
in it, sentimentally considered, something of the 
pathetic. It should be borne in mind that those who 
did come now could only come from those two coun- 
ties where the Negroes were at their lowest, if 
contact with whites was elevating; for, in Beaufort 
and Georgetown, the whites composed a very small 
minority. 

It was not a time, however, for sentimental con- 
siderations, and to fuse the general mass of the 
convention into a condition appreciative of the 
scheme it was aimed to present at that stage in the 
proceedings, Senator Tillman reviewed at great 
length and with terrific force the previous fright- 
ful excesses of carpet-bag government and Negro 


189 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


rule in the State. Upon the adoption of a resolu- 
tion for the incorporation of his speech in the jour- 
nal of the Convention, with a fairness, a milder man 
might not have exhibited, he requested that the re- 
plies of such of the Negro delegates as desired to 
speak, should also be therein printed. 


That Negro delegate designated by him as “the 
ablest man of color I have ever met,” W. J. Whipper, 
(Dan. Chamberlain’s piece de resistance in the seven- 
ties), certainly the most notorious of all who rose to 
prominence in Reconstruction days, failed to avail 
himself of the privilege. While far less able, with 
a manly determination distinctly to his credit, Rob- 
ert Smalls did, and defended his character: with 
courage. He was accused of corruption. He 
pointed to the fact that he had been pardoned, and 
he claimed with great earnestness that the pardon 
had been granted him without solicitation on his 
part, and in spite of his urgent demand for trial. 
While his remarks do not indicate any exceptional 
intelligence, nor his reasons for desertion the clear- 
est conception of what constitutes public morality, 
there is a ring of manly courage in his speech which 
wins sympathy. 

After setting forth the above claim, he concluded 
as follows: 


“Mr. President, I am through with this matter. It should 
not have been brought here. All the thieves are gone, they 
are scattered over the nation; but I have remained here. 
My race has honored me with a seat on this floor and I shall 
serve them to the best of my ability. My race needs no 


190 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


special defense, for the past history of them in this country 
proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All 
they need is an equal chance in the battle of life. I am 
proud of them and by their acts towards me, I know they 
are not ashamed of me, for they have at all times honored 
me with their votes. I stand here the equal of any man. I 
started out in the war with the Confederates; they threatened 
to punish me, and I left them. I went to the Union Army. 
I fought in seventeen battles to make glorious and perpetu- 
ate the flag that some of you trampled under your feet. 
Innocent of every charge attempted to be made here against 
me, no act or word of yours can in any way blur the record 
that I have made at home and abroad. Mr. President, I am 
through and shall not hereafter notice any personal remark. 
You have the facts in the case, by them I ask to be judged.”’241 


But it must not be imagined from this, that the 
speaker was in any sense hacked. On the contrary 
he continued to participate in the work of the con- 
vention to the best of his ability. 

As an amendment to Section 34, of the draft of 
the Constitution, which provided—“The marriage of 
any white person with a Negro or mulatto person 
who shall have one-eighth or more Negro blood, 
shall be unlawful and void.”—Smalls proposed the 
addition,—‘“‘and any white person who lives and co- 
habits with a Negro, mulatto or person who shall 
have one-eighth or more Negro blood shall be dis- 
qualified from holding any office of emolument or 
trust in this State, and the offspring of any such 
living or cohabiting, shall bear the name of father 
and shall be entitled to inherit and acquire property 
the same as if they were legitimate.’”’ But the Con- 
vention voted it down and not improperly, for 
Pasevintealtot S. C. Constitutional Convention 1895, p. 476. 

191 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


though clever politics, the concluding clause was 
vicious legislation. The amiable boldness of the mu- 
latto Smalls won for him, however, general toler- 
ance and some regard; but he was not intellectually 
in the class with that octaroon, Thomas E. Miller, 
who, in the minds of most persons, made on this 
occasion the greatest display of talent. 

Miller made many speeches and furnished much 
acceptable copy for the press. He, therefore, not un- 
naturally, loomed large in the eyes of the knights of 
the quill, and his ablest speech was later utilized, 
by the most cultured representative of the race in 
this country, Professor W. E. Burghardt DuBois, 
as one buttress of a defense of Reconstruction, in a 
paper read by him at the annual meeting of the 
American Historical Association in 1909, which was 
published later in the Review. Still the speeches 
of both Smalls and Miller were defensive. 


Of another and less known colored delegate to this 
convention, this could not be said as denoting his at- 
titude. While bearing himself with dignity and 
strictly observing the proprieties of debate, the 
mulatto of whom mention is next made, eloquently 
illustrated the adage, that “the business of an op- 
position is to oppose.” The man and his efforts his- 
torically considered deserve some recognition. 

James E. Wigg, was born at Linden Park, Bluff- 
ton, Beaufort District, South Carolina, March 25, 
1850, the son of a colored woman by a white man. 
As a small boy he attracted the attention of Gen. 
David Hunter, upon whom he waited at Hilton Head, 
who, after the war, took him with him to Washing- 


192 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ton, D. C., and placed him at Whalen Institute. He 
was said to have been well versed in theology, and 
‘an earnest follower of Swedenborg.’’?4?, His work 
in the Convention was marked by a distinct exhibi- 
tion of intelligence. He submitted a draft for a 
constitution which was creditable, and he proposed 
an ordinance, to the Committee on Finance and Tax- 
ation, of distinct merit. It constituted politics of a 
high order. It was a bold challenge to the white 
majority, on a line hard to defend the unfavorable 
report of the Committee in response to. 


Wigeg’s ordinance was as follows: 


“Be it ordained by the people of South Carolina, in con- 
vention assembled, that the Comptroller General, County 
Auditors, County Treasurers and all persons charged with 
the collections of State or municipal taxes, be and are here- 
by required, to keep separate and distinct accounts of all 
tax returns and taxes paid by white and colored taxpayers 
and that the same be always open for public inspection.” 


The Convention voted this down, although the sub- 
ject is known to be one upon which much loose 
generalization is continually indulged in as the basis 
of political appeals to voters. 


But Wigg struck a more telling note than this. 
The concluding clause of Article 1, Sec. II being 
reported: 


“After the adoption of this constitution any person who 
shall fight a duel or send or accept a challenge, for that 
purpose, or be an aider or abettor in fighting a duel, shall 
be deprived of holding any office of honor or trust in the 
State, and shall be otherwise punished as the law shall 
prescribe.” 


242285. H. Rogers, Letter to Author, December 9th, 1910. 
193 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


To this Wigg suggested the simple addition, “or 
any one engaged in lynching.’’*** The amendment 
was voted down, but in what position did the vote 
so disposing of it place the law-making whites? 
How does it read today? 

Wigg’s speech on the suffrage clause, from the 
standpoint of his race, was also a strong presentation 
of the subject, pitched upon a high plane, eloquent 
and dignified. No extracts from it will do it justice. 
To be appreciated at its full value, it must be read 
as a whole. In it was none of that amusing buf- 
foonery, which in another colored delegate’s re- 
marks so captivated the press representatives; but 
it did contain not a little biting sarcasm. It is a 
speech well worth the perusal of the careful stu- 
dent of history, who is desirous of informing him- 
self of the various styles of men, our institutions 
and our practices have evolved. But with all that 
has been stated, yet the most interesting incident 
connected with this colored man’s service in the 
Convention, was his clash with the strongest and 
most influential member of that body, in an im- 
promptu debate, arising almost accidentally, in 
which, by no stretch of imagination, can the colored 
man be said to have been worsted. That he owed 
his triumph to the weakness of the position of his 
adversary was his fortune, and he used it to effect. 


As has been before suggested, by passing such a 
law to restrain the egress of the Negroes, as the new 
regime had done in 1890, the inconsistency of dec- 
larations concerning the dangerous characteristics 
 “8Newes and Courier, October 8rd, 1895. 

194 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of the race had been made manifest, and in the full 
tide of his progress as leader of the Convention, 
Senator Tillman found himself on a shoal from 
which it took some floundering to get again into 
natatory water. 


As reported in the press the incident appears as 
follows: 


“Senator Tillman said he would preface his remarks by 
reading from his first or inaugural message, when he ad- 
vocated township government... ‘At that time we were 
hampered by this Sinbad’s old man, the Negro. He is here 
and he is going to be here and we must look out for the 
nigger in the wood pile.’ ” 


Mr. Wigg (a young colored man) asked Senator 
Tillman: 


“Do I understand that you object to the presence of the 
Negro in South Carolina?” 

“Senator Tillman: Not a bit, but I would place no re- 
straint upon his emigration. 

“Mr. Wigg: Did you not sign a bill calculated to prevent 
his leaving? 

“Senator Tillman: I never signed such a measure.?44 


“Mr. Wigg: I mean the act imposing a tax on emigration 
agents.” 


To this distinct specification of the act passed 
while he was Governor Tillman at first hastily 
claimed that it had been passed during his predeces- 
sor’s term of office; but later, on reflection, made a 
point of informing the Convention that he found he 
had signed it and desired, ‘‘to apologize to the State 
for having done so.” 
~ M4Ibid. October 26, 1895. 

195 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The author of the Act, a cotton planter from Marl- 
boro, W. D. Evans, then arose and also apologized 
for it, and a verbal pledge was given, that the Act 
should be repealed. At that time the Act was in 
its amended form, only operative for one-half of 
the year. But so far from being repealed, the only 
action concerning it, was the making of it operative 
for the whole year as originally drawn, license re- 
duced. 

As dissatisfying as such a statement may be to 
those to whom the injustice of it, and the disregard 
of a promise given under such solemn conditions, is 
repugnant, it must be borne in mind, that similar 
legislation of the State of Georgia had been, in the 
mean time, reviewed by the Supreme Court of the 
United States, and sustained upon the grounds inter 
alia, that— 


“Tf it can be said to affect the freedom of egress from the 
State or the freedom of the contract, it does only inciden- 
tally and remotely.’’24® 


The Supreme Court of the United States, there- 
fore, shares with the Lower South the responsibilty 
for this harsh and unwise restriction of the right of 
labor to its fullest wage, as well as the denial to a 
peculiarly ignorant and helpless mass of the popula- 
tion, of an assisted egress from localities where they 
are said to be such a menace from their extraordi- 
nary numbers, that a setting aside of all law and de- 
priving of individuals of life without law by mobs 
is sometimes by some people justified. 
~ Supreme Court Reporter, Williams vs Fears Vol. 21, pp. 128-130. 

196 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


But, while arguing for labor its right to go where 
it wishes to win its highest wage, we need not shut 
our eyes to the rank selfishness of the industrial 
agencies, which sweep out of a community the bulk 
of the able-bodied males and leave only the depen- 
dent women and children as a burden on it. That, 
however, could and should be met by legislation 
preventitive of the breaking up of families simply 
to meet the demands of industrial slavery. But the 
right of the laborer to all that his work can earn 
should be protected, nevertheless. 


As fruitful as the incidents of this extraordinary 
Convention were, in illustration of phases of the 
Negro question, the most remarkable of all, how- 
ever, remains yet to be narrated. It has been pre- 
viously stated, that in 1865, when the States of the 
then defunct Confederacy endeavored to rehabilitate 
themselves, as members of the Union, after Eman- 
cipation, but before Reconstruction, both South Car- 
olina and Mississippi adopted codes, in which were 
the provisions that “every person who may have of 
caucasian blood seven-eighths or more shall be 
deemed a white person,” thus separating such from 
“persons of color’, a denomination including all Ne- 
groes and mixed blood having less than seven-eighths 
of Caucasion blood, who were declared at the same 
time, “not entitled to social or political equality with 
white persons.” 

This would appear to have been only another way 
of stating that those who did have seven-eighths or 
more of Caucasian blood were entitled to social and 
political equality with the whites. But Reconstruc- 


197 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


tion, as has been shown, swept this legislation out of 
existence, in the attempt then made to place all upon 
one plane of social equality, and to punish as severely 
as a law could be framed to, such as might be ac- 
cused of any discrimination of a social nature. This 
preposterous piece of legislation was in its turn done 
away with when Reconstruction passed away, and 
in its place there was enacted the law which pena- 
lized marriage between whites and Negroes. In 
the South Carolina convention of 1895, an attempt 
was made to so frame the law, as to make it con- 
form to the view held in South Carolina and Missis- 
sippi in 1865; but to this there was opposition in the 
shape of an amendment reading as follows: 


“Sec. 34. The marriage of a white person with a Negro 
or mulatto person who shall have any Negro blood, shall be 
unlawful, and the parties to such marriage, upon convic- 
tion shall be punished as the General Assembly may direct.’’246 


Over this amendment to the report of the com- 
mittee much discussion arose and among other ex- 
pressions of opinion, was one from Mr. Sligh of 
Newberry, that it would be better to allow any one 
with only one sixteenth of Negro blood to raise 
white, rather than force such, to raise colored chil- 
dren. Sentiment was, however, against his view, 
and the proposed amendment was accepted as above 
outlined. 

But in two weeks, after many renewals of dis- 
cussion as to the wrong and injury which might re- 
sult from accusations apt to be based upon a pro- 
portion so indefinite, according to press report: 

” 28News and Courier, October 4th, 1895. 
198 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“On motion of Mr. W. D. Evans, Sec. 34, was recurred to, 
and trouble began. Mr. Evans proposed to amend the sec- 
tion by providing that the miscegenation law shall not apply 
to persons of mixed blood, whose status is that of white 
people. Mr. George Tillman stated, that he was very feeble, 
but that he felt compelled to say something on this subject. 
For one, he had felt ashamed when the delegate from Beau- 
fort had clapped his hands, and declared that the coons had 
a dog up a tree. He was further mortified to see that the 
gentleman from Newberry (Mr. Sligh) and the gentleman 
from Edgefield (Mr. B. Tillman) goaded and taunted into 
putting in the constitution, that no person with any trace 
of Negro blood should intermarry with a white person and 
that for such marriage the Legislature should provide pun- 
ishment even beyond that of bastardizing children and adul- 
terizing marriage. Mr. Tillman said the Mississippi law 
forbidding marriage between white people with those with 
more than one-eighth Negro blood is the old South Carolina 
law. If the law is made, as it now stands, respectable fami- 
lies in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton and Orangeburg will be 
denied right to intermarry among the people with whom they 
are now associated and identified. At least one hundred 
families would be affected, to his knowledge. They had sent 
good soldiers to the Confederate Army, and are now land- 
owners and taxpayers. He asserted, as a scientific fact that 
there was not a full blooded Caucasian on the floor of the 
Convention. Every member had in him a certain mixture 
of Mongolian, Arab, Indian or other colored blood. The pure 
blooded white man had needed and received an infusion of 
darker blood, to give him readiness and purpose. It would 
be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of 
scandal, horror, feud and blood-shed to undertake to annul 
or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of 
Negro blood. By the rule of evidence traditional notoriety 
was admissible in proving pedigree. The doors would be 
opened to scandal, malice and greed; to statements on the 
witness stand, that the father or the grandfather, or grand- 
mother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. 
Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half 


199 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the world with dynamite, to prevent or avenge attacks upon 
the honor of his mother or the legitimacy or purity of the 
blood of his father. He moved the restoration of the sec- 
tion to its original form.”247 


Mr. George D. Tillman’s effort was successful, and 
the section, as finally adopted stands: 


“Art. III, Sec. 33. The marriage of a white person with 
a Negro or mulatto or person who shall have one eighth or 
more of Negro blood shall be unlawful and void.” 


*7Tbid. October 17th, 1895. 


200 


CHAPTER XI 


But if, in the personalities of Wigg and others, 
illustrations had been afforded of the advancement 
of the Negro in refinement, culture and morals, in 
the mass, the race was by no means fit to discharge 
the full duties of citizenship in the South. Even as 
the most active and progressive moved out and into 
other regions, they seemed to bring to bear upon 
the question, in propria persona, an argument which 
was inclining the inhabitants of the North and West 
more and more to the vociferous expression, that the 
Southern white man best understood the Negro; 
that the Negro was better off in the South than else- 
where; and that the South was the natural home of 
the Negro. 

However else the whites of the North might differ, 
as Republicans or Democrats, philanthropists or pol- 
iticians, there was almost unanimity of opinion, 
that the Negro was not wanted in the North. But 
he was pushing in. 

Despite all his other claims to greatness, there- 
fore, the fact, that he and his policy furnished the 
most effective means and instrument for retaining 
the Negroes in the South, contributed immensely to 
the late Dr. Booker T. Washington’s remarkable 
hold on Northern sentiment, for with his rise to 
fame and financial power, the Negro question took 
on a new phase. He had a mission and it is gen- 
erally considered to have been to lead the Negroes 
to manual and industrial training, which it was in 
the main, but also its aim in part was to keep the 


201 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Negroes in the South; for that is the meaning of: 
“Cast down your bucket where you are.” 

Booker T. Washington came first prominently in- 
to view by the speech from which the above extract 
was taken, delivered by him at the Atlanta Cotton 
States Exposition, in Atlanta, Georgia, September 
18, 1895. What D. H. Hill had urged for the 
Southern whites in 1866, Washington now urged for 
the Negroes. The Northern people were growing 
somewhat weary of the Negroes’ continual appeals 
for political recognition and this speech, avoiding 
such and couched in the most conciliatory phrases 
concerning the Southern whites, was a surprising 
departure. It struck a popular chord. It was writ- 
ten up in the very best vein by the most celebrated 
journalistic correspondent of that period, James 
Creelman, then in the zenith of his career of feature 
writing, as an “epoch making oration.” This writer, 
commanding the pages of the most widely read New 
York paper of that day, ranked— 


“Professor Booker T. Washington, President of the Tus- 
kegee (Alabama) Normal and Industrial Institute, as the 
foremost man of his race in America.’’248 


But Creelman did not stand alone. The editor 
of the Atlanta Constitution telegraphed to the North 
that “the address was a revelation.” 

The Boston Transcript declared: “It dwarfed all 
the other proceedings and the exposition itself.’’?+° 

President Cleveland was even quoted as affirming 
that “‘the exposition would be fully justified if it 


248Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 239. 
29Tbid. p. 226. 


202 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


did not do more than furnish the opportunity for 
its delivery.’’?*° 

The key-note of the speech has been before noted. 
In addition it contained two specific declarations, 
which constituted “the revelation’”’: 


1. In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate 
as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to 
mutual progress,251 


2. The wisest of my race understand, that the agitation 
of questions of social equality is the extremest folly and that 
progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come 
to us, must be the result of severe and constant struggle 
rather than of artificial forcing.’’252 


When to these expressions was added the further 
declaration :— 


“that we shall prosper as we learn to dignify and glorify 
common labor.’’253— 


it was scarcely surprising that the speech was 
generally accepted in the South as a renunciation of 
all hopes of social eqality, and an acceptance of a 
position for the Negro very near to that which Cal- 
houn had assigned to him—‘‘the best substratum 
of population in the world” for it would be one— 
“upon which great and flourishing commonwealths 
could be most easily and safely reared.” 

What fault then could the superficial Southern 
thinker find with such a policy? It certainly fitted 
very admirably with that which Senator Butler 
had declared some five years previously it was 
" 20Tbid. p. 227. 

1Tbid. p. 221. 


*2Tbid. p. 223. 
*3Tbid. p. 220. 


203 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“not a common thing to hear men say,” viz, the 
Negroes make “a good peasant class.” 


It is true the Senator had warned his fellow 
countrymen “that there is no such thing as a peasant 
class under our form of government”; but Washing- 
ton’s remarks were so much more soothing to the 
South than Butler’s warning, that the average 
Southern man put away from his contemplation the 
possibilities dormant in the great mass of Negroes 
packed in the South. 

And if the Southern man is willing to chance 
these possibilities, what reasonable being can blame 
the more sensibly sectional .Northern man, for his 
cheerful readiness to finance the experiment? 


That, in turning the attention of the race to man- 
ual and industrial training, Washington performed 
a great work is not to be denied. That, in influenc- 
ing many of his people to follow him in such a pro- 
gram, he has raised the ambition of not a few to a 
much higher plane than the race had shown itself 
heretofore capable of, must be admitted, and these 
are great achievements. But it is an error to imagine 
that Washington ever made for himself or his race 
any renunciation of the aspiration for social equality. 
He condemned the agitation, not the aspiration for 
it. In the opinion of Dr. Washington, “color pre- 
judice”’ was incompatible with true greatness of 
soul, and the highest praise he could bestow upon a 
man was that he was destitute of “color prejudice.” 


Writing of President Cleveland, he said: 
“Judging from my personal acquaintance with Mr. Cleve- 
land, I do not believe he is conscious of possessing any color 
204 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


prejudice. He is too great for that. In my contact with 
people, I find that as a rule, it is only little, narrow people, 
who live for themselves, who never read good books, who 
do not travel, who never open their souls in a way to permit 
them to come in contact with other souls—with the great 
outside world. No man whose vision is bounded by color 
can come in contact with what is highest and best in the 
world. In meeting men in many places, I have found that 
the happiest people are those who do the most for others; 
the most miserable are those who do the least. I have also 
found that few things, if any, are capable of making one 
so blind and narrow as race prejudice.’’254 


Although of very different temperaments, be- 
tween the two colored men Booker T. Washington 
and T. Thomas Fortune, there seemed to be quite a 
sympathy. Washington in his autobiography avers 
it: 

“In the summer of 1900, with the assistance of such prom- 
inent colored men as T. Thomas Fortune, who has always 


upheld my hands in every effort, I organized the National 
Negro Business League.”’255 


T. Thomas Fortune is a man of education and 
ability. As the editor for many years of the lead- 
ing colored paper in the United States, its columns 
indicated that he certainly upheld the hands of Dr. 
Washington. Indeed he did not hesitate to belabor 
without stint the heads of such colored detractors of 
Dr. Washington as Monroe Trotter of Boston and 
others, even administering a rap or two to Profes- 
sor W. E. Burghardt DuBois, when the latter failed 
to keep step with the Washington procession. But 
T. Thomas Fortune was of too independent a nature 


24Tpid. p. 228. 
65Thid. p. 316. 


205 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


to be restrained from the expression of his own 
view, and shortly before his surrender of his posi- 
tion as editor of “The Age’’, he published the follow- 
ing declaration: 


“The question of the right to marry and give in marriage 
is at the bottom of the whole life of the Republic. The 
Afro-American who says he does not desire social equality 
is an unmitigated fool or an outrageous blackguard, who 
sacrifices what he should know to be a primal right to a 
subservient purpose.” 


Can it be believed that a man sufficiently fearless 
to make this declaration and feeling obliged to do 
so, would uphold at all times the hands of an un- 
mitigated fool or an outrageous blackguard? It is 
difficult to believe it. Therefore, it is reasonable to 
assume that while Washington, with “the wisest” 
of his race understood: “that the agitation of ques- 
tions of social equality was the extremest folly,” he 
nevertheless cherished the aspiration. And indeed 
it would be most unnatural if he did not. 

Bearing all the possibilities in mind, the question 
is, however, whether any policy which tends to keep 
massed in the South so many of the Negroes as are 
banked there, is to the best interest of the South, or 
the Nation, or conducive of the greatest good to 
the greatest number? 

But Washington did not stand as the unrivalled 
leader of his race. Two other members of it crit- 
icised his leadership with arguments which could 
not be brushed aside too lightly. The first of these 
compiled in 1899, what was the most thorough in- 
vestigation into the conditions enveloping the Negro 


206 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


at the North, which had been printed up to that 
time. The author of “The Philadelphia Negro” is 
thus introduced by Dr. A. Bushnell Hart: 


“The most distinguished literary man of the race W. E. 
Burghardt DuBois—an A. B. and Ph. D. of Harvard, who 
studied several years in Germany, and as Professor of So- 
ciology in Atlanta University has had an unusual opportunity 
to study his people.’’256 


Dr. DuBois’ book was an entirely different style of 
work from the popular “Up from Slavery” published 
a year or two later, “with the painstaking and gen- 
erous assistance of Max Bennett Thrasher’’, as the 
autobiography of Washington. 


DuBois’s book, ‘“‘The Philadelphia Negro” is a 
most carefully made sociological investigation. 


Later in 1903, Dr. DuBois published another 
volume entitled: ‘The Souls of Black Folk’”—in 
which after a preface opening with: 


“Easily the most striking thing in the history of the 
American Negro since 1876, is the ascendency of Mr. Booker 
T. Washington.”— 


followed by a fine tribute to his worth, the author 
declares :— 


“the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and 
utter courtesy of the mistakes and short comings of Mr. 
Washington’s career, etc.” 


The criticism is this: 


“His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and 
South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s 
shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic 


*6Albert Bushnell Hart, The Southern South p. 16. 
207 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, 
and the hands of none of us are clean, if we bend not our 
energies to righting these great wrongs. The South ought 
to be led by candid and honest criticism to assert her better 
self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged 
and is still wronging. The North, her co-partner in guilt— 
cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold.... 
The black man of America has a duty to perform, a duty 
stern and delicate, a forward movement to oppose a part 
of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washing- 
ton preaches Thrift, Patience and Industrial Training for 
the masses, we must hold up his hands... But so far as 
Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, 
does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, be- 
littles the effect of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher 
training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, 
the South or the Nation does, this,—we must unceasingly and 
firmly oppose them.”257° 0 °° 


Between ‘the most distinguished literary man of 
the race” and “the most eminent man whom the 
African race has produced” there was then a pro- 
found difference, for what could be considered, by 
many, as the essential element of greatness in the 
policy of Washington, was that, for which this 
critic took him most severely to task, viz, his wil- 
lingness that the burden of the Negro problem 
should be shifted from the shoulders of the whites 
to those of the Negroes. 

Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the 
willingness of Northern and Southern whites, that. 
it should be shifted is not to their credit, there is a 
virility in the promulgation of a policy for the Ne- 
groes by a Negro, which seeks to force the Negro 
“to stand upon his feet and play the game”, which 
~ 7DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk pp. 41-58-59. 


208 


LIBRARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 





WILLIAM HANNIBAL THOMAS, 1900 
Free Person of Color—Ohio, 1860 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


offsets many imperfections, and for that Dr. Wash- 
ington must get credit. 


The second of the two Negro thinkers who ques- 
tioned Dr. Washington’s leadership, has also been 
quoted by Professor Hart; but of William Hannibal 
Thomas, one of the few Negroes of distinct intel- 
lectual force as before narrated, who participated in 
the struggles of Reconstruction in South Carolina 
and emerged, uncriticised, Dr. Hart has but two 
allusions. 


Of the author of—‘‘The American Negro; What 
he was; What he is; and What he may become,” 


Professor Hart, in his own strong book, only says, 
first: 


“He has made admissions with regard to the moral qual- 
ities of his fellow Negroes which have been widely taken 
up and quoted by anti-Negro writers.’’258 


Second: 


“Thomas, himself a Negro, asserts that the sexual im- 
pulse constitutes the main incitement of the race, and is 
the chief hindrance to its social uplifting.’’25° 


In these two temperate utterances, as put, Pro- 
fessor Hart conveys what might be understood as 
disapproval; yet it can be urged in defense of 
Thomas’ criticism of his race in the last particular, 
that it is paralleled by the assertion of Professor 
Lombroso, himself an Italian, concerning Italians, 
when contrasting them with the English; while, 
with regard to the first, it would be difficult to find 
a paragraph framed by Thomas more suited for 


2=8Hart, The Southern South, p. 15. 
20Tbid. p. 134. 


209 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


quotation by anti-Negro writers, than the following 
in Professor Hart’s book: 


“The Negro preachers are universally believed to be the 
worst of their kind, and very often are. If things that are 
regularly told by the white people and sometimes admitted 
by the colored, are true, the majority of the Southern Ne- 
groes, rural and urban are in a horrible state both physically 
and morally.’’26 


Yet whatever the Negro preachers may have been, 
there is good reason to believe that, in the cities, 
their moral tone is improving, and there, now, high 
exemplars of morality can be found. 

Again, despite his apparent pessimism, the future 
holds for Thomas a hope denied to not a few, who 
are impatient of his probe. Where can be found 
anything rising higher in optimism that the follow- 
ing: 

“We believe American Christianity has in the person of 
the Negro, an unmeasured wealth of latent spiritual energy 
which will be aroused and consecrated, when the notion of 
sacerdotalism is scattered from before his clouded vision, 
when transmitted ethnic fetichism is eradicated from his 
religion and the virility of his nature, bared of empty 


forms of righteousness, is breathed upon by the spirit of 
God, himself.’”’261 


The truth concerning this matter is, that Thomas 
had gone too deeply into it to be readily understood 
by those who have not had their powers of percep- 
tion quickened by that daily contact, which teaches 
somuch. Therefore, while Thomas’s book may seem 
extremely pessimistic; yet, when his philosophy is 


260Tbid. p. 135. 
21Wm. H. Thomas, The American Negro, p. 165. 


210 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


boiled down, it is not very different from what Dr. 
Washington is thought to have preached, that God 
helps him who helps himself, or as Thomas puts it: 


“Every endowment of manhood and womanhood is within 
the reach of every human being, who puts integrity before 
material gain, and self respect before mendacious folly.’’262 

‘“‘When, therefore, the Negro race acquires in the broad- 
est and best sense an industrial education, there will come a 
radical regeneration of Southern social economy, and Negro 
education will stand then for home life, domestic industry, 
public integrity and national welfare.” 


To some extent, therefore, the difference between 
Washington and Thomas was’ temperamental. 
Washington’s optimism led him to declare: 


“Despite superficial and temporary signs, which might lead 
one to entertain a contrary opinion, there never was a 
time, when I felt more hopeful for the race than I do at 
the present time.’’264 


What these superficial and temporary signs lead- 
ing to the contrary opinion were, Washington did 
not disclose; but Thomas did: 


“TI am firmly rooted in the conviction, that Negroism, as 
exemplified in the American type, is an attitude of mental 
density, a kind of spiritual sensuousness; but that each of 
these characteristics, though endowed with great persistency 
and potency, is nevertheless amendable to radical treat- 
ment.”’265 


According to Max Nordau, spiritual sensuousness 
is by no means a characteristic or state interfering 
with great achievement; for he credits Ignatius 
Loyola with it. 

262Tbid. p. XI. 
2638Tbid. p. 264. 


2Thomas, The American Negro, p. XXII. 
%4Washington, Up from Slavery, p. 318. 


211 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


But now to consider the view of this Northern 
Negro. 

With the possible exception of Alfred H. Stone, 
it is doubtful if, up to this date, any individual has 
proven himself better equipped for the discussion of 
the Negro question than William Hannibal Thomas. 
A comparison might warrant the statement, that if 
Mr. Stone has enjoyed the wider range, Thomas has 
been able to make the more exact study. If Stone 
has the stronger mind, and it is still further 
strengthened with a fuller culture, Thomas has the 
more judicially balanced temperament. Thomas’ 
work is done. Stone’s has not yet reached its full- 
est development. We can, therefore, get a clearer 
idea of Thomas’ view in its entirety than we can 
obtain of Stone’s. 

No man has drawn more from his experience than 
Thomas, and few have possessed such varied ex- 
periences to draw from. Simply and modestly as 
he sketches his life and pedigree, the brief recital 
indicates opportunities for observation which were 
most unusual, and, had he kept a diary, it would 
have been simply invaluable. Should he ever pub- 
lish his impression of the men he has met and the 
events he has been connected with, it could not fail 
to be a most interesting and instructive book; for to 
powers of observation, which are unusual, he unites 
judgment which is distinctly admirable. Some brief 
extracts may put the man and some of his views 
before the reader. 

His book opens with an explanation, indicative of 
that which he thinks distinguishes the Negro from 


212 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the white, characteristic traits rather than color, 
after which he briefly states his own pedigree and 
life history, as follows: 

“None of my ancestors were owned in slavery, so far as 
my knowledge goes. On my mother’s side I come from 
German and English stock. My maternal grandfather, the 
son of a white indentured female servant by a colored man, 
was born at Bedford, Pennsylvania, about the year 1758. 
My maternal grandmother was a white German woman, 
born in 1770, and brought up at Hagerstown, Maryland. 
This branch of my ancestry emigrated to Ohio in 1792; and 
settled near the town of Marietta, where my mother was 
born in 1812. On the paternal side my grandparents, who 
were of mixed blood, were Virginians by birth. My father, 
who was born in 1808, near Moorfield, in Hardy County, 
removed to Ohio before attaining his majority. I was 
born on a farm, in a log cabin, on the fourth day of May, 
1848, in Jackson Township, Pickaway County, Ohio.’’266 


After reciting the recollections of his youth, his 
father’s active interest concerning, and his own 
sympathy for, the “Underground railroad’’, and his 
efforts to educate himself, Thomas asserts that at 
the outbreak of hostilities he tendered his services 
in 1861 to the Government, but was refused admis- 
sion to the army on account of color. In a civil 
capacity, however, he entered the 42d. Ohio Infantry 
Regiment, and— 

“was in the Big Sandy campaign with General Garfield, 


and during the summer of 1863, with the Union forces at 
Cumberland Gap, Tennessee.” 


In the fall of that year he joined the 95th. regi- 
ment, with which he remained, until the capture of 
Vicksburg, when, returning to Ohio, he enlisted in 

26Tbid. p. XI. 


213 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the 5th United States colored troops, and was ap- 
pointed sergeant, and after service in the Depart- 
ment of the James, was in the assault on Fort 
Fisher, North Carolina, and lost an arm in the cap- 
ture of the city of Wilmington. 

Going South to teach, he took up his residence 
first in Georgia, later in Newberry, South Carolina, 
in 1878, and was appointed a trial justice. In 
1876 he was elected a member of the legislature, and 
after the fall of the radical governments of the 
South, “gave up the practice of law and withdrew 
from active participation in politics” to devote his 
attention to the educational advancement of the 
freedmen, in pursuit of which, he “visited every 
Southern State and community.’?* . 

Certainly such a one would seem admirably equip- 
ped for the task of discussing most interestingly and 
instructively the Negro question, as a perusal of 
his book clearly indicates. Why then, is the book 
not more popular in the North, where is to be found 
the great reading public of the United States? 

Despite the advanced civilization of that section, 
its enlightenment, and its assimilation of British 
ideals, with the growth of the material prosperity of 
its people, there has grown a belief that money, if 
given with sufficient liberality, can cure any trouble. 
This is more than hinted at in ‘‘The Souls of Black 
Folk.”’?°§ How then can it be other than extremely 
distasteful to those, so conscious of their great 
generosity, to read in place of the encomiums with 


TDi! Derek 
68DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, p. 58. 


214 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


which the assisted writings of Washington abound, 
the following audacious criticism: 


| 

“Our Northern philanthropists, with no trustworthy knowl- 
edge of the conditions of the freedmen, have neither sought 
nor acquired capable insight into the needs and wants of 
Negro life. Having been influenced by the special pleading 
of interested advocates, and their own imperious convictions, 
it is consequently small wonder that they have hitherto 
failed to deal with the problem in the most satisfactory man- 
ner.”’269 


It is true that in considering: 


“The two antagonistic forces which germinated at about the 
same period in the Western world at Jamestown and Ply- 
mouth,” 


Thomas thinks the product, as well as the seed, of 
the latter is far superior; but, to the residents of 
that portion of our common country, that has long 
been axiomatic and does not wipe away the offense 
of making admissions with regard to the moral qual- 
ities of his fellow Negroes, which have been widely 
taken up and quoted by anti-Negro writers. 

Almost it might seem in anticipation of this, 
Thomas says: 


“In this age of realism illusions should have no place and 
especially in a question of such perplexity as this and one 
involving such vital issues. The Negro above all others 
should welcome honest criticism, for in so doing, he will 
discover that those who point out faults are not always 
actuated by vindictive sentiments and he may learn that 
timely reproof and wise guidance may be derived even from 
the censure of enemies.’’27° 


2°Thomas, The American Negro, p. 268. 
20Tbid. p. 141. 


215 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


With regard to the possibilities of improvement, 
Thomas believes: 

“That rural work constitutes a basis for character build- 
ing incomparably beyond that of any agency within his 
(the Negro’s) reach.”271 

While Thomas’s view concerning the injury to the 
South of the presence in it of the Negro is more 
strongly put it is the view expressed by Senator 
Butler in 1900, and of Senator Barnwell in 18038, in 
all probability ; yet it is a striking fact that in South 
Carolina, since emancipation, after thirty years of 
experience, we came back to the view expressed in 
1865, and this, in spite of the fact that, as stated 
by a great authority on the subject: 

“It is very convenient for the Southern white man to in- 
clude everybody with a trace of Negro blood under the gen- 
eral race designation.”272 

Mr. Stone cannot include South Carolina as con- 
tributing to what he styles: 


“The combined influence of Northern and Southern white 
men and of Negroes and mulattoes to perpetuate an absurd 
and unscientific fiction,’’273 
for the South Carolina law with regard to inter- 
marriage between the races does not include every 
one with a trace of Negro blood as a Negro. And 
this brings us up to a consideration of this phase of 
the question. 

The view of T. Thomas Fortune, on the inter- 
marriage of persons of different races, has been 
cited. 

" 8ntpid, p. 75. 
272Stone, The American Race Problem, p. 397. 


778Ibid. p. 398. 
216 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


DuBois’s, expressed with temperance, is as fol- 
lows: 


“Among the best classes of Negroes and whites, such 
marriages seldom occur.’?74 


Yet he maintains that: 


“Any legislation against it, is inconsistent with the prin- 
ciple of freedom of choice in a matter exclusively pertaining 
to the individual.” 


Twenty years later, in “The Comet’, he allowed 
his fancy fuller play. 


When Thomas reaches this point in his discussion, 
we find neither the extravagant expression of For- 
tune, nor the apparently varying views and fancies 
of DuBois. Thomas says: 


“There is no doubt that judicious race amalgamation is 
capable of exercising a profound and far reaching influence 
upon inferior types of people. Degenérate people are always 
improved by an infusion of virile blood; but the benefits 
derived from wise race admixture are to be found in trans- 
mitted capacity not color. ... The redemption of the Negro 
is impossible through any process of physical amalgamation; 
it is possible and assured through a thorough assimilation of 
the thoughts and ideals of American civilization.’’27 


Now, as has been shown, Washington thought a 
color prejudice a thing to be lamented, and yet he 


preached for years for the Negroes to remain in the 
South; where Thomas says: 


“There is more absolute social equality and personal 
freedom in the intermingling of the races than has ever been 
obtained in the North, where, in the main the public social 


rights of the Negro are respected.’276 
24DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, pp. 366-358-359. 
“Thomas, The American Negro, pp. 408-410. 
276Tbid. p. 280. 


217 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


From which Thomas argues: 

“That should wealth, culture and character come to the 
great body of the Negroes, all trace of race prejudice would 
disappear from our Southern section as effectually as it has 
been obliterated in Portugal and the Latin countries.”277 

If Washington happened then to hold the same 
view as the above, even without expressing it, there 
was no discord between him and his lieutenant, For- 
tune, and therefore, while Mr. Stone was pondering 
the problem of the mulatto, Washington, looking 
with steady eye toward the future infusion of virile 
blood, cried to the applauding white people of the 
South ;—‘‘Cast down your bucket where you are.” 

Is it for the best interest of all that the bucket 
should be cast down where we of the South are now? 

By the census of 1900, Mr. Stone’s State was the 
one State of the three, South Carolina, Mississippi 
and Louisiana with a Negro majority in 1890, which 
showed no improvement in this respect. 

Louisiana’s Negro majority of 789 had given place 
to a white majority of 78,808; South Carolina’s tre- 
mendous Negro majority of 226,926 had at last felt 
the beginning of the ebb, and was 225,415; but 
Mississippi’s 197,708 had risen to 266,430, and, 
therefore, in Mississippi were the very worst condi- 
tions and those most fruitful for race friction; for 
Mr. Stone has declared: 


“A primary cause of race friction is the vague rather in- 
tangible, but wholly real feeling of ‘pressure’ which comes 
to the white man almost instinctively in the presence of a 
mass of people of a different race. In a certain important 
sense, all racial problems are distinctly problems of racial 
distribution ... So today, no State in the Union would have 


a7Ipbid. p. 281. 
218 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


separate car laws where the Negro constituted only 10 or 
15 percent of its total population.’’278 


In another lecture Mr. Stone had declared: 


“Negroes constitute practically a third of the population 
in the South both city and country. In the North they con- 
stitute but one fortieth of the city population and only an 
insignificant, really negligible one-ninetieth of that of the 
country.” 

Yet, Mr. Stone quotes as an authority, Booker T. 
Washington, who declared: 

“If we were to move four millions of the eight millions of 
Negroes from the South into the North and West...a 
problem would be created far more serious and complicated 
than any now existing in the Southern States.’’279 

These two statements as they would be generally 
understood, are inconsistent with each other and 
contradictory. If it be meant that a sudden thrust- 
ing out of four million people from one section, and 
impelling them into another, as fast as they could be 
moved, would precipitate a problem, no one would be 
foolish enough to deny, or attempt to deny, that it 
would. But, as the gradual introduction of four mil- 
lion Negroes into the North and West could not bring 
the mass of them up to more than 10 percent of the 
whole population, then, in many respects, the prob- 
lem would be ameliorated by any policy which led 
to their introduction in a reasonable process of dif- 
fusion, although it undoubtedly would dispel some 
dreams, and give rise to some friction and consider- 
able inconvenience for a while. 

And, that even Booker Washington commenced 


278Stone, The American Race Problem, p. 217. 
27°Tbid. p. 53. 


219 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


to see the advantages of diffusion, became apparent 
in at least one utterance before his death. 

But, before treating of conditions and opinions in 
1910, some information may be obtained from a 
careful consideration of what moral advancement 
the culture of the slave-holding South had produced 
in that class of its colored population, which as free 
persons of color, in the period of slavery, could 
themselves hold slaves. 

In the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 
year 1859 the list of taxpayers shows that 353 free 
persons of color returned for taxation, $679,164.00 
of real estate. They also returned for taxation 290 
slaves. Of these tax payers the wealthiest was 
Maria Weston, whose return for real estate was 
$41,575.00, slaves, 14; horses, 1. That was one- 
seventh of the value of the real estate returned by 
the wealthiest white tax payer in the city and two 
more slaves. But Maria Weston, while the wealth- 
iest of the free persons of color in Charleston, was 
not very much more wealthy than R. E. Dereef and 
Robert Howard, and the average wealth of the free 
person of color was fairly up to the average wealth 
of the whites. The story is told in Charleston that 
when the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher visited the 
city, after the war between the States he invited him- 
self to become the guest of R. E. Dereef, who re- 
ceived him with admirable hospitality, personally 
looking to it that the great man lacked nothing in 
the way of comfort and treating him with perfect 
civility; but studiously and tactfully avoiding all 
efforts upon the part of his guest to establish an 
intimacy. The great Abolitionist confided to a white 

220 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


resident his disappointment that he had met no 
other member of the family or aroused in the breast 
of his host any decided interest in one who had 
done so much to bring about emancipation of the 
Negroes. But his confidant called to his attention, 
that he had been treated with admirable and un- 
complaining hospitality, by one whom he had re- 
lieved of considerable property. Yet it must not 
be imagined that all free persons of color owned 
slaves. Of an interesting family, the Holloways, 
nine taxpayers in all, the wealthiest returned for 
taxation, real estate to the amount of $8,300.00, 
while the total of the nine summed up $36,000.00, 
only one of the nine, however, owned a slave.?*° 

It is through what has been preserved by a mem- 
ber of this family, that we get a glimpse of what 
may be considered to some extent as the viewpoint 
of this class. That the ideal of J. H. Holloway was 
somewhat cramped may be admitted; but if so it 
should also be admitted that the basis was one of 
the strongest upon which an ideal could repose. It 
was social purity. Holloway’s father, grandfather 
and greatgrandfather had all been free men. He 
was a saddler and harness maker by trade, but he 
was nevertheless an aristocrat. He was an unob- 
trusive individual, of gentle nature, true to his con- 
victions and very virtuous. Being opposed to vac- 
cination, he refused to pay the small fine imposed 
and went to jail instead, assuring the white judge 
who expressed his regret at being obliged to sen- 
tence him, that he had no feeling about the matter, 

20W. E. & Cog. List Tax Payers, City of Charleston 1859, pp. 392-403. 

Zak 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


believing the official was doing his duty. The in- 
tellect of Holloway was not extraordinary and to 
not a few his ambition may seem small and trifling; 
but it was pursued with such a patient faith and 
pious determination, as to impart to it, in the eyes 
of some whites in the same locality, who had ac- 
complished something in life, a dignity entitling it 
to respect. His position resembled that of a priest 
of a dying cult, to whom the sight of the altars he 
intensely revered, more and more deserted, as he 
advanced in years, but the more added to the fervor 
of his worship; and so Holloway, to the day of his 
death, remained a devoted disciple of “The Brown” 
or as it was later called “The Century Fellowship,” 
the principle assets of which were a grave yard and 
some minute books. Holloway’s life was a living 
denial of the charge that the Negro has no interest 
in the past or future, for to him both of these periods 
were of importance. What was most noticeable in 
his thoughts was the balance of them. 


On his business card: “J. H. Holloway—Harness 
Repair Shop, 39 Beaufain Street,” he had caused 
to be printed a quotation from the Bible—*“Let your 
moderation be known to all men’, to which he had 
put the very practical addition—‘‘in charges.” Up- 
on the other side of the card he had paraphrased 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, as follows: 

“Know old Charleston? Hope you do 
Born there? Dont say so, I was too. 
Born in a house with a shingle roof 
Standing still, if you must have proof 
And has stood for a century.” 


222 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“The Brown” or “Century Fellowship Society’’, 
which occupied almost all of Holloway’s leisure 
thoughts, had been founded in 1790. In 1904 some 
ceremonies were enacted upon the occasion of the 
laying of a corner stone for the new hall, it was 
hoped later to erect.**! The address of welcome was 
delivered by a venerable member, ninety-six years 
of age, and was very brief. The religious services 
were conducted by the rector of the oldest Episco- 
pal Church in Charleston, himself a veteran of the 
Confederate war, who, as a major of engineers, 
had contributed greatly to the ‘‘Defense of Char- 
leston Harbor,” the history of which, under such 
caption, as author, he had also preserved. There 
was an ode by a member of the Society, and an ad- 
dress by a member of the board of aldermen of 
the city, also an ex-Confederate soldier. But a re- 
view of the aims and aspirations of the Society by 
J. H. Holloway, throwing as it does a light upon the 
point of view of a class, not given to undue ex- 
posure of their opinions, was probably the most 
important utterance of the occasion.”** He said: 

“My first proposition is that our society was founded upon 
right principles, having as its foundation stone Charity and 
Benevolence, and its capstone social Purity. Environed as we 
have been by the varied conditions through which we have 
had to pass and to have survived one hundred and fourteen 
years, with a record no organization may be ashamed of, so 
we may well exclaim “To the Lord be all the praise.” Our 


guests today represent the conditions through which the 
Society has passed during the Century. On the one hand 


281Press of the Southern Reporter, p. 1. 
37 bid. p. 5. 


223 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


we have the dominant race and on the other we have the 
backward race. The first looked with a scrutinizing eye on 
our every movement, so as to charge us with being a dis- 
turbing element in the conditions that existed, and they 
made stringent legislative enactments; and the public senti- 
ment of the masses was to discourage everything that our 
Society stood for; but fortunately there were the classes in 
society, and as our fathers allied themselves with them, as a 
consequence, they had their influence and protection and so 
they had to be in accord with them and stand for what they 
stood for. If they stood for close fellowship, so did our 
Fathers. If they stood for high incentive, so did our 
Fathers. If they stood for slavery, so did our Fathers, to 
a certain extent. But they sympathized with the oppressed, 
for they had to endure some of it, and fellow feeling makes 
us wondrous kind, and many times they had as individuals 
helped slaves to buy their freedom, and on one occasion our 
records prove that the Society loaned one of their members 
the money to purchase his family. Our Fathers were pub- 
lic spirited, for our records prove, that from 1811 to 1814 
the Society was interested in the defense of Charleston. 
So under perplexing conditions our Society passed more than 
three score and ten years of existence until the war of the 
sixties and while their material prosperity was at stake, 
their sympathies were with the side that promised more 
liberties and larger opportunities; however, the members of 
the Society, not as an organization, but as individuals be- 
came the firemen to protect the city from flames caused at 
times by the shelling of the city. We have proof that some 
of the sons of our members wore the Blue, and at least 
one contributed his life blood for freedom at the charge of 
Battery Wagner under the lead of the brave Col. Shaw, 
of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and thus the blood of 
South Carolina and Massachusetts mingled as in the case 
of the Revolution... The change of conditions after the 
War did not make any difference with our Society, they con- 
tinued in the beaten path of Charity and Benevolence; but 


224 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


they still kept the compact close, feeling that the heritage of 
the Fathers was only dear to their children, and as we had 
three generations born since the organization, we could en- 
joy social equality among ourselves... In conclusion I 
will say that we are not responsible for our birth, but God 
has placed us where we could best honor Him, and his 
command is—‘Honor thy Father and Mother that thy days 
may be long’. So we are honoring our Heavenly Father’s 
command in honoring our ancestry.’’283 


Had Holloway only lived to read the exposition of 
the subject—‘‘The Negro in the New World”, which 
in 1910 appeared from the pen of the great English 
explorer and Negro character specialist, Sir Harry 
Johnston, he would have learned that: 


“Money solves all human difficulties. It will buy you love, 
honor and respect, power and social standing.’’284 


Would he have accepted this even from this great 
authority? His Society was languishing. How 
was the structure to be strengthened in 1904? In 
that year President Roosevelt appointed as Collec- 
tor of the Port of Charleston, Dr. W. D. Crum, a 
colored physician of that city, a respectable Re- 
publican politician, well thought of by Dr. Booker 
T. Washington, but not wealthy. To some, who 
thought the appointment hardly the fittest, it 
looked as if the incident was fanned into a national 
question unnecessarily; but when it is noted what 
its importance appeared to be to men like Mr. 
Stone, of distinctly philosophical cast of mind in 
consideration of the color question; and further, 
that upon Mr. Taft’s elevation to the Presidency 


23Tbid. p. 8. 
284Sir H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. XI. 


225 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


there was no reappointment, but instead the in- 
cumbent was appointed as minister to Liberia, it 
would seem as if there had been question of the 
wisdom of the appointment elsewhere than in the 
South. But whatever difference of opinion there 
may have been on the matter of the appointment, it 
would have been very difficult to find any reasonable 
ground for condemning the appointee in his accep- 
tance; for he would have been less than a man had 
he refused it. All through the verbal storm that 
raged over it, the appointee remained perfectly 
silent, concerning himself solely with the duties of 
the office, and at the conclusion, when he departed 
for Liberia, in a letter to the head of the agency 
through which his transportation had been arranged, 
there was only apparent warm affection for the 
spot Holloway had so fondly alluded to, in the 
paraphrased lines of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Holloway evidently did not subscribe to the idea 
of Sir Harry Johnston as to the power of money to 
solve all human difficulties, for there were colored 
men of means in Charleston at the time. It was 
character, and particularly self control, that ap- 
pealed to Holloway. His selection, therefore, was 
W. D. Crum, who had shown that he possessed char- 
acteristics very akin to those which Holloway had 
shown to be the ideals of the Century Fellowship 
Society, although Crum’s forbears had not been free 
persons of color before the War of Secession, a mat- 
ter of importance to Holloway. 

Of another product of the old South a word may 
be further said for the benefit of the fiercely pre- 


226 








JAMES H. FORDHAM, 1891 


Free Person of Color—South 
Carolina, 1860 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


judiced English authors, who are unable to believe 
that any good thing can come out of the slave- 
holder’s Nazareth. 

James H. Fordham, of the free persons of color 
before the war, held the position of a lieutenant on 
the police force of the city of Charleston, from 1874 
to as late as 1896. He was a light quadroon, who 
might have been passed for a Spanish officer. Taci- 
turn to a degree, he discharged the duties of his 
office thoroughly and conscientiously. Scarcely 
ever speaking, unless spoken to, and apparently 
never ruffling the white roundsmen under his com- 
mand. Yet, in the longest speech he ever made, 
backed as it was by appropriate action, he evinced 
an understanding of, and devotion to the fundamen- 
tal principles of democracy which, if appreciated by 
the great German people, might have saved them 
from the pains and penalties they are now under- 
going for subjecting the world to the exigencies of 
military ambition. 

The occasion of Fordham’s speech was an incident 
in 1891, occurring in one of those periodical strug- 
gles by which democracy in the United States per- 
petually renews its strength at the expense of of- 
ficialdom. At the close of a warmly contested and 
close primary, the successful faction opposing the 
municipal administration in Charleston, found it 
difficult to bring the result in one ward to a count 
and decision. Impatient and suspicious, as the de- 
lay wore past midnight, a worthy but somewhat 
choleric individual, of the faction announced suc- 
cessful at every other point hours earlier, denounced 


227 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the presence of the police in the poll where the de- 
lay was being maintained by the masterly inactivity 
of the administration manager. 

One of the policemen on duty, ordinarily as ami- 
able as he was strong and courageous, advanced to- 
ward the citizen and angrily challenged the ac- 
cusation with the inquiry: 

“What right have you to make charges against 
the police?” 

Before the citizen could reply, the quadroon 
lieutenant sprang from his horse, pushed through 
the crowd and, placing himself between the two, 
the only colored man in a group of excited whites, 
firmly but quietly said to the policeman: 


“What right has he to make charges against you? The 
right of any citizen, at any time to make charges against 
any policeman, and I am here to uphold that right.’’285 


It is useless to comment upon this incident; for, 
to any one who needed such, comment would be use- 
less. 

As an incident of the growth of caste feeling, 
twelve years later in the same locality, a mulatto 
policeman having arrested a drunken German for 
noisily quarreling with his wife upon the public 
streets was, upon the demand of the leading hyphe- 
nated politician of the city, dismissed from the force. 

In the years which intervened between the events 
last narrated, the Democratic president, with re- 
gard to whom Dr. Washington had asserted that 
he possessed no color prejudice, had concluded his 
" a85Jervey, Lecture Chicago University; The Elder Brother, p. 446. 

228 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


second term, made illustrious by the firm stand 
taken by him in the Anglo-Venezuelan dispute, which 
had been brought to his attention and fought to a 
decision,**® against the extreme and arbitrary 
claims of Great Britain, by that almost forgotten 
Southerner, William L. Scruggs of Georgia. 

Yet, despite the cloud in which this absolutely 
proper stand for justice between nations and main- 
tenance of the Monroe Doctrine involved him for 
awhile, on account of the belittling comments of 
Anglophiles, Cleveland has passed into history as a 
strong president and a great man. He was suc- 
ceeded in his high office by the gentlest mannered 
and sweetest tempered individual who has ever ex- 
hibited in such station the high personal traits 
which adorned the character of William McKinley. 

Whatever these two men thought concerning the 
color question was no doubt discoverable; but it was 
not announced as a new gospel; for while great in 
spirit they were not noisily so. They were both 
great men. Cleveland, the Democrat, was greater 
in his public character and official achievements, the 
Republican, McKinley, in the personal integrity and 
absolute self abnegation which adorned his life and 
crowned hisend. Cleveland opposed to malfeasance 
a rugged force, which did much to build up public 
integrity, lamentably lowered in Grant’s two terms. 
McKinley’s respect for law and order was so sincere, 
that in his dying moments he interposed to protect 
his assassin from the natural fury of the mob, there- 
by defending an anarchist from the outburst of 

*86Scruggs, Colombian and Venezuelan Republics, pp. 300, 301, 324, 325. 

229 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


anarchy which the vile deed occasioned, and giving, 
in his own suffering person, so interposing, the no- 
blest appeal that could possibly be made against 
lynching. 

The executive who succeeded McKinley was es- 
sentially different. No president of the United 
States has done as much as Mr. Roosevelt to wipe 
out distinctions between white and black. That he 
should have estranged Southern whites is not un- 
natural; that he should have aroused the enmity of 
Northern and Southern colored men discloses to 
what an extent the Negro is amenable to impulse 
rather than reason. Mr. Alfred Holt Stone has dis- 
cussed three incidents which occurred in Mr. Roose- © 
velt’s first term. Benjamin Brawley, a colored man, 
discusses the even more important incident which 
occurred in Mr. Roosevelt’s second term. In the 
first three Mr. Roosevelt held the centre of the stage, 
in the fourth, the Negroes were the actors, Mr. 
Roosevelt only responding. Mr. Stone treats the 
first three, in part, as follows: 


“Three incidents marked the progress of the controversy 
which broke upon the country shortly after Roosevelt’s suc- 
cession to the presidency. These were the Booker Washing- 
ton dinner, the appointment of Crum, and the closing of the 
Indianola post office. There were four parties in interest— 
Mr. Roosevelt, the Southern press and people, the Northern 
press and people and the American Negro. ... The Presi- 
dent acted clearly within his ‘rights’ in each case. This 
point must be conceded without argument. The dinner epi- 
sode was in itself no more than a matter of White House 
routine .-. Within forty-eight hours, the President was 


230 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


being denounced for having crossed the social equality dead 
line through breaking bread with a negro.’’287 


According to Mr. Stone, the attitude of the South 
was one of general disapproval, the attitude of the 
Northern press a defence of the President. After a 
searching consideration of some fifty or more pages, 
in which Mr. McKinley’s attitude in distributing 
patronage is compared to that of Mr. Roosevelt, 
Mr. Stone discusses the attitude of the Negroes. 
After taking up in turn various expressions by Pro- 
fessor Kelly Miller, Dr. W. E. Burghardt DuBois 
and Mr. William Pickens, Mr. Stone asks—“What 
then is the real meaning of their words?” Mr. 
Pickens says: 


“one side advises ‘quietly accept the imposition of infe- 
riority. It is a lie but just treat it as the truth for the 
sake of peace. Diligently apply to the white man the title 
of gentleman, and care not if he persists in addressing you 
as he calls his horse and his dog. Be patient. This general 
disrespect and discrimination will develop into the proper 
respect and impartiality at some time in the long lapse of 
geological ages, just as the eohippus has developed into the 
race horse, and the ancestor of the baboon into a respectable 
Anglo-Saxon.’ The other side says, ‘I ask for nothing more 
or less than the liberty to associate with any free man who 
wishes to associate with me. Your colour discriminations, 
legal or not, are all damnable, inasmuch as they draw an 
artificial and heartless line, give encouraging suggestions to 
the vicious and allow the stronger in brute power to force 
bastardy upon the weaker without remedy. Colour has ab- 
solutely no virtue for me and however much I am out- 
numbered I will not retreat one inch from that principle. 
However little my position might affect savage opposition, 
by the God of your fathers and mine, I will never by volun- 


287Stone, American Race Problem, pp. 248, 245. 
201 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


tary act or word acknowledge as the truth what I know to be 
the grossest of lies. And you might ask all the truly valiant 
hearts of the world and the ages how they beat toward these 
contrary tenets.’ ’’288 


It is true this utterance was some five years later; 
but Mr. Stone thinks that— 


“without the background of that Wednesday dinner at the 
White House, the canvass which subsequently absorbed and 
reflected such lurid colours would have given us an almost 
lifeless picture, as tame and dull as the usual afterglow of 
Southern appointments by Mr. Roosevelt’s predecessor.’’289 


To his discussion Mr. Stone appends the following 
interesting little note: : 


“The substance of this paper was embodied in an article 
submitted to several magazines while the Crum and India- 
nola incidents were being generally discussed throughout 
the country. The article was not found available.” 


In the same year that Mr. Pickens was declaring 
with fine oratorical fervor: 


“Your colour discrimination, legal or not, are all damnable, 
inasmuch as they draw an artificial and heartless line, give 
encouraging suggestions to the vicious and allow the stronger 
in brute power to force bastardy upon the weaker without 
remedy.’’291 


—three Negro companies in the United States Army 
indicated, in their own way, their disapproval of 
these distinctions. The incident ‘is treated by Mr. 
Benjamin Brawley, a colored writer of culture, as 
follows: 
~ 28Tbid. pp. 328, 329. 

289Tbid. pp. 814, 315. 


20Tbid. p. 350. 
Ibid. p. 328. 


232 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“In 1906 occurred an incident affecting the Negro in the 
army that received an extraordinary amount of attention in 
the public press. In August 1906 Companies B, C and D of 
the Twenty Fifth Regiment, United States Infantry were 
stationed at Fort Brown, Brownsville, Texas. On the night 
of the 13th took place a riot in which one citizen of the 
town was killed and another wounded and the Chief of 
Police injured. The people of the town accused the soldiers 
of causing the riot and on November 9th, President Roose- 
velt dismissed, without honor, the entire battalion, disquali- 
fying its members for service thereafter in either the military 
or civil employ of the United States.’”’292 


The author states, that, later, the civil disabilities 
were, by President Roosevelt, revoked and he ex- 
hibits the terms of a resolution in the Senate to in- 
vestigate the matter; but the fact that the Presi- 
dent’s action was sustained?®* apparently was not 
of sufficient importance to be made a matter of com- 
ment; nor the behavior of the soldiers. 


The President’s comment at the time was emi- 
nently sane, just and commendable. He wrote: 


“The fact that some of their number had been slighted 
by some of the citizens of Brownsville, though warranting 
criticism upon Brownsville, is not to be considered for a 
moment as a provocation for such a murderous assault. All 
the men of the companies concerned including their veteran 
non commissioned officers instantly banded together to shield 
the criminals. In other words they took action which can- 
not be tolerated in any soldiers black or white, in any police- 
man black or white, and which if taken generaly in the 
army would mean not merely that the usefulness of the 
army was at an end, but that it had better be disbanded in its 
entirety at once.’’294 
~ 22Brawley, Short History American Negro, p. 185. 


23Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. 2, p. 27. 
294Tbid. p. 28. 


233 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The inability of even cultured Negroes to sympa- 
thize with the view of the President was their mis- 
fortune rather than their fault. It indicated that 
they lacked the elementary principle essential to 
the rulership of themselves, much less to the ruler- 
ship of others. 

It was not so much the amount of attention as the 
amazing attitude of the vast majority of Negroes 
capable of understanding what had occurred, which 
attended that attention. To the vast majority of 
Negroes, irrespective of rank, culture or professions 
of Christianity, there was something noble and 
manly in the behavior of “the veteran non-commis- 
sioned officers’’, so absolutely repugnant to the prac- 
tical politician Roosevelt, a high type of white. The 
inability of the succeeding occupant of the highest 
office in this country, genial in disposition, liberal 
in view; but yet unable to appreciate the flaming 
zeal and prompt action, with which a real leader of 
a free people meets such behavior in armed under- 
lings, marks a certain weakness in that Northern 
white. Such weakness coupled as it was with the 
behavior of such public men as Senator Foraker did 
much to produce the deplorable incident ten years 
later so properly stamped with executive disap- 
proval and inevitable punishment to the last degree. 

It is quite possible and to some degree probable 
that weak and vicious comments on Roosevelt’s ac- 
tion in the Brownsville matter had something to do 
with the Houston riot. The comment also affected 
the Southern white man profoundly in his attitude 
to colored soldiers and policemen. 


234 


CHAPTER XII 


Despite the incidents related in the last chapter, 
which might be claimed to be almost isolated or per- 
taining to a very small class of the Negro popula- 
tion, to comprehend clearly all that is embraced in 
the diffusion of the Negroes throughout the United 
States, and the consequent dissolution of the mass 
in the Southern States, while endeavoring to grasp 
what is so intelligently urged by Mr. Alfred Stone, 
concerning “pressure’’, the investigator should not 
fail to realize that in the Southern States, if the 
Negro was willing to accept unreservedly the posi- 
tion of an inferior and a menial, there was formerly 
no distinct repugnance to him, per se. In fact, with 
a small class, the descendants of slave holders, he 
obtained and still obtains tolerance and not a little 
patronizing affection, being treated in about the way 
in which a careless, amiable, hot tempered father 
might treat an amusing child. 

As long as the child remains a child, it might not 
be so bad for him; but the question is what kind of a 
man does it make of him? 

With regard to the views and practices of the 
whites of the Northern States concerning the Negro 
question, they may be divided into three classes. 

The first class, corresponding to a similar class in 
Great Britain, may be not unfairly described as a 
small, sentimental, somewhat hysterical class, lack- 
ing in neither culture, character nor wealth. These 
entertain a prejudice in favor of the Negro on ac- 
count of his color and previous condition of servi- 
tude. At one period in the history of the United 


235 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


States, wielding power out of all proportion to the 
wealth, culture or numbers of its members and rep- 
resenting the disintegrating force of an idea to 
“sap the power of rank, of wealth and of numbers,” 
it has left its mark on the history of the country in 
the great almost incalculable good of Emancipation; 
and in the terrific injury, injustice and folly of Re- 
construction. 

The second class is best described as having no 
color prejudice. While considerably larger than the 
first, it is scarcely the largest in point of numbers; 
yet, until very lately, it could have been declared 
with accuracy, as the most influential class in the 
Northern States. It is true that it must be borne 
in mind that it has not yet felt what the most thor- 
ough white student of the Race question has de- 
scribed as: 


“The vague, rather intangible, but wholly real feeling of 
the ‘pressure’ which comes to the white man in the presence 
of a mass of people of a different race.’’295 


But, with this reservation, it may be styled as 
calm, tolerant, kindly tempered and quite consider- 
ate of an opposing view; and, as its possessors are 
singularly free from sentimentality, they wield just 
the degree of power and influence which is the ac- 
companiment of such great qualities. 

The third class is, in point of numbers, first, and 
although, today, the power and influence this class 
wields is not proportionate to its numerical strength, 
it is slowly but steadily increasing its influence. 
The great majority of the members of this class en- 
~ 25§tone, The American Race Problem. 


236 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


tertain towards the Negro an intense prejudice. 
Some members of it cannot bear the presence of a 
Negro near them in any capacity; being utterly 
unable to accept with any patience, from such, the 
most menial services. Undoubtedly such a preju- 
dice tends to prevent miscegenation and, without it, 
all the laws which may be enacted will offer but a 
comparatively feeble bar. 

On the other hand, wherever there are two races 
living side by side in fairly kind feeling, as long as 
men and women remain creatures of such an infinite 
variety of individual tastes, desires, powers of re- 
straint, passions and appetites, miscegenation, to 
some extent will prevail, and such being the case, 
where the inferior exists in the greatest numbers 
there will be the greatest result from it; while, on 
the other hand, as the great numbers of the inferior 
race are lessened, the tendency toward miscegena- 
tion must also be lessened. 

This happens from various reasons. First, from 
the simple fact, that, with the lesser numbers of the 
inferior race, there must be lesser opportunity. 
Second, from the very important fact that the fewer 
the number of the inferior race, the more its mem- 
bers must be brought into contact with and under 
the influence of the standards of the superior race, 
and absorbing their ideals, with a consequent in- 
crease of personal dignity, and decency ; from which 
will necessarily increase the disposition to refuse 
solicitations provocative of miscegenation, except 
on terms not readily granted. 

From these deductions, it must be apparent, that, 
in a broadly national conception of patriotism, as 

237 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


opposed to sectionalism, however disguised, the na- 
tural and slow diffusion of the Negroes throughout 
the United States must result in an elevation and 
improvement of the condition of the population white 
and black, taken as a whole; although it is quite pos- 
sible, by some portions, which have been perfectly 
free from any share whatever of the burden of an 
inferior race, a share of the weight and responsibil- 
ity could then be no longer avoided, or discharged 
entirely by sermons to the portions less happily 
situated, or the payment of something like a bounty. 

Finally, to those Southerners who cherish the wild 
delusion, that, with a retention of great numbers of 
the inferior race in their midst, a sentiment, backed 
by laws against intermarriage, is sufficient protec- 
tion against miscegenation, the illustration afforded 
by East Africa may be pointed to. East Africa lies 
just south of the oldest civilization we know of, and 
has been invaded in the past by horde after horde 
of whites. 

The Biblical story of Cain and Abel may be taken 
in part as illustrative of the two vocations by which 
mankind slowly arose from the savage occupation 
of the hunter to the two higher divisions, namely, 
those who tamed the beasts, and those who tilled 
the soil. 

Modern medical opinion is to the effect that no 
occupation so develops the physical perfection of 
humanity as the pastoral vocation; while reflection 
would indicate that it must cultivate a stronger set 
of characteristics than either hunting or tillage. 


238 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Bring into collision in a comparatively primitive 
state a pastoral people and one engaged in agricul- 
ture and the shepherds and herdsmen will rule. 


But will their contempt for those they have 
brought under and subjected to their rule suffice to 
prevent miscegenation? That is the serious ques- 
tion for the Southern man. 


It is apparent in East Africa, where this contact 
has existed for many generations, despite the pres- 
ervation of every racial prejudice which marks 
the Southern white man, the superior race has not 
avoided miscegenation, but, upon the contrary, it 
has steadily progressed, until distinctions in color 
are almost gone, and even the more stubbornly yield- 
ing distinctions of facial traits and hair texture are 
gradually giving away, and this miscegenation seems 
to have checked progress in civilization. 


Writing of the two classes of Negroes found near 
the great African lakes, the explorer Stanley says: 


“We discovered that there were two different and dis- 
tinctly differing races living in this region in harmony with 
each other, one being clearly of Indo-African origin, possess- 
ing exceedingly fine features, aquiline noses, slender necks, 
small heads, with a grand and proud carriage; an old, old 
race, possessing splendid traditions and ruled by inflexible 
customs, which would admit of no deviation. Though the 
majority have a nutty brown complexion, some even of a 
rich dark brown, the purest of their kind resemble old 
ivory in color and their skins have a beautiful soft feel, as of 
finest satin. These confine themselves solely to the breeding 
of cattle and are imbued with a supercilious contempt for 
the hoeman, the Bavira, who are strictly agricultural. No 
proud dukeling in England could regard a pauper with more 
pronounced contempt than the Wahuma profess for the 


239 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Bavira. They will live in the country of the Bavira, but 
not in their villages; they will exchange their dairy produce 
for the grain and vegetables of the hoeman, but they will 
never give their daughters in marriage but to a Wahuma 
born. Their sons may possess children by Bavira women, 
but that is the utmost concession.’’2°6 


All of which indicates great pride still in the 
superior race; but a reduction to what is practically 
two classes of Negroes, as far as the outside world is 
concerned. Note Livingston also in Southwest 
Africa. 

But in addition to the reasons advanced why this 
matter of the diffusion of the Negroes through the 
United States should be accepted as best, there is 
the consideration that it is inevitable. That it is 
in progress can no longer be doubted, although, as 
Robert Y. Hayne declared in 1827, it would be, “a 
very gradual operation.” 

The strong grip which the Republican party main- 
tained in Federal politics for the sixteen years, up 
to 1912, has in some measure to be credited to the 
influx from the South of Negroes into the North 
and West, where they most naturally and reason- 
ably vote the Republican ticket. Indeed it has been 
positively asserted by one whose devotion to that 
party could scarcely, at the time, have been ques- 
tioned, that they may have been brought there for 
this purpose. 

Says Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, in his very 
interesting and instructive book, “The Southern 
South”: 

" 26Stanley, In Darkest Africa, Vol. I, p. 384. 
240 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“A systematic effort has been made to settle colored 
people in Indiana, in order to hold that State in the Repub- 
lican column; and there are now probably nearly a hun- 
dred thousand there, a third of whom settled in Indianap- 
olis, where they furnish a race problem of growing serious- 
ness.”’297 


It is true that the Census for 1910 only disclosed 
in Indiana 60,280 Negroes; but Mr. Hart’s not un- 
reasonable estimate was probably based upon the 
preceding Censuses of 1880, 1890 and 1900, alone 
available in 1910, when he wrote, which did indicate 
a rising rate of that species of population, from 15% 
to 27%, while that of 1910 indicated for that State 
a drop of 4.8%. A similar falling off being recorded 
in Illionis, where the rate of increase dropped from 
49 percent to 28.2 percent, and in Ohio alone of these 
three great States, the rate increased. There it had 
risen from 11 to 15 percent. Proceeding East, a 
decline was also recorded for Pennsylvania from 438 
to 23.6; for New Jersey from 47 to 28.5; for New 
York from 40 to 35.2 percent. The total increase 
of the Northern States east of the Mississippi from 
the year 1900 to 1910 being only 142,363 as against 
188,347 from 1890 to 1900; but west of the Miss- 
issippi from 1900 to 1910 the increase was 107,747, 
as against 51,194 from 1890 to 1900; a total increase 
in the whole area outside of the South of about 
250,000 against about 240,000 for the previous de- 
cade. At the same time in the South for the de- 
cade 1900 to 1910 an increase of Negroes of only 
757,901 as against 1,079,054 from 1890 to 1900, with 
an actual decrease in the population of the three 
WiatHart.. The Southern South, p. 1138. 


241 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


States, Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee, amount- 
ing to 33,020. 

This would seem to indicate a rate of increase in 
the South of about ten percent and outside of the 
South, in the rest of the United States about twenty- 
five percent, up to 1910. 

But in connection with the above there is another 
fact which is of some importance, and that is the 
increase of the entire Negro population of the 
United States, in 1900 amounting to 8,849,789, as 
exhibited by the Census of 1910 was 351,029 less 
than the increase of the 7,488,788 Negroes in the 
United States in 1890 to 1900. 

What has caused the difference? 

The not unnatural but wholly unsatisfactory sug- 
gestion of the Census authorities, that the discrep- 
ancy is due to the errors of others Censuses, should 
be received with politeness coming from such 
efficient workers; but can hardly be taken at its 
face value. After all the Censuses are our safest 
guides, and there is not much reason for thinking 
one so very much better than another. 

Again, there is a class of reasoners prone to take 
to themselves the somewhat comforting conclusion 
that the Negroes may be moving into the North and 
West from the South; but that they cannot live there 
and die out; to clinch the argument, they point to 
Canada, where it is asserted just about and after 
the war a great number of Negroes had settled in 
Ontario, and certain it is that by the official Census 
of Canada for 1911, the Negro population had de- 


242 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


creased from 17,4387 in 1901 to 16,877 in 1911. 
Yet there are other facts and circumstances leading 
to speculations affording explanation of a part of 
the loss. 


From 1900 to 1920, there passed over into Canada 
from the United States some 1,318,834 citizens of 
the latter country, some of whom have been Negroes, 
how many mulattoes, not designated. 


It is true that, as Negroes, not more than 383 so 
classified entered Canada up to 1911, and only 13 
during the fiscal year 1910-1911 ;?°> but many more 
under the classification “citizens of the United 
States; must have entered in the light of the fol- 
lowing newspaper comments: 


“Winnipeg, Man. February 24, 1911. The Dominion Gov- 
ernment today decided to stop the immigration of Negroes 
from the United States, and stopped at the boundary a party 
which intended to go to Western Canada.” 


By subsequent and fuller accounts it appeared 
this party numbering 200 were finally permitted to 
go on and settle, the correspondent of the London 
Times, writing to this paper as follows, from To- 
ronto: 


“There has been some discussion in Parliament and in the 
Press over the arrival in Western Canada of 200 Negroes, 
who will settle in the free homestead lands in the Athabasca 
Landing district, north of Edmonton. It is said the move- 
ment threatens to become formidable and within the year 
5,000 Negroes may seek homes in the Peace River Country. 
This, however, is probably an exaggeration, arising out of 
the alarm which the invasion has excited. The 200 Negroes 


28Bulletin XII Fifth Canadian Census, p. 12. 
22°Oliver, Iimmigration Facts and Figures, p. 9. 


243 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


who have just arrived entered the country of Emmerson in 
the Province of Manitoba, and were subjected to rigorous 
examination by the Immigration officials, but, under the 
law, none of them could be refused admission. All had 
money, all were in good health and apparently of good moral 
standing. The least that any head of a family possessed 
in money was $300, and they brought also household effects 
and farm implements. <A similar party of 200 came from 
Oklahoma to Canada over a year ago, and settled in the 
neighborhood of Athabasca Landing, where they seem to 
have prospered, and to have proved acceptable to the coun- 
try.’?300 


The correspondent went on to observe that re- 
fusal of homesteads might arouse ‘feeling in Wash- 
ington” and also fail to meet “‘the approbation of the 
Canadian people.” But he thought, if it was the be- 
ginning of a formidable movement from the South- 
ern States, there would certainly be a demand for 
as vigorous regulations as could safely be devised 
to prevent or limit Negro immigration. From 
Washington came the news item that “‘if it appeared 
that the Canadian Government had decided to bar 
American citizens because of their color, the State 
Department would protest’, and later it was as- 
serted that by representations to American railways 
interested in the movement, it had been stopped.** 

In the light of the actual decline in the very small 
number of Negroes in Canada’s population, dropping 
from 17,487 in 1901, out of a total of 5,371,315 in- 
habitants, to 16,877 out of a total of 7,206,643 in 
1911, the alarm and excitement over this “invasion” 
is absolutely incomprehensible. Yet there is a pos- 


307 ondon Times, April 3, 1911. 
%01T bid. 


244 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


sible explanation in the following speculation. The 
Indians in Canada in 1901 numbered, with the half 
breeds, 127,914; presumably without, in 1911, they 
numbered only 105,492. At the same time two 
origins, “various” and “unspecified,” increased from 
32,999 to 165,655, and it is not at all impossible that 
among these 165,655 we may find many mulatto 
“invaders,” as it is scarcely possible, no matter how 
prolific the Indian half-breeds may have proved 
themselves to be, that they could have supplied more 
than twenty percent of the increase of 132,656, 
whose origin were not disclosed in 1911. 

Sir Harry Johnston’s estimate of the Negro and 
Negroid population for Canada in 1910 was 30,000. 
It may well have been much more. 

Now, of the 4,880,009 Negroes in the United 
States in 1870, not more than 584,049 could be 
classed as mulattoes; while of the 9,827,763 colored 
of 1910, 2,050,686 are so classed ;°°? it, therefore, ap- 
pears as if miscegenation is preceding at a pretty 
rapid rate, the mulattoes increasing just about twice 
as fast as the entire colored population; but while 
the proportion of mulattoes in the Northern colored 
population is still much larger than it is in the 
Southern population, the increase of the mulattoes 
of the South is about four times as great as at the 
North. Under these conditions it would be amus- 
ing, if it were not tragic to hear the average South- 
erner, who thinks he thinks about the subject, plac- 
idly declare that his objection to the diffusion of 
the Negro in the United States is that, outside of 
28Burean Census OU; .8.*19102 Bole 120 nes: 

245 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the South, they amalgamate with the whites. Of 
course it is not pretended that this tremendous dif- 
ference in the increase of this class in the two sec- 
tions is due entirely to a greater amount of mis- 
cegenation between whites and colored in the South 
than at the North, for there is no way of ascer- 
taining how many of the mulattoes of the North 
have in the last ten years passed on into Canada as 
“Unspecified” or “Various” in the “Origin”; but 
making every allowance which reasonably may be 
made, it does not seem as if there is any greater 
degree of miscegenation at the North than at the 
South, if there is as much; while the North possesses 
in Canada a safety valve, which practically insures 
that region from any serious injury from Negro 
immigration. How unfortunate, therefore, it is, 
that it has not occurred sooner to the Negro leaders, 
to preach the advantages to be derived from the 
members of their race in moving out to some degree 
from the South into the West. 

Seventeen years after his famous advice—“Cast 
down your bucket where you are,” Booker T. 
Washington gave a glance Westward as follows: 


“There are more than 270,000,000, acres of unused and 
unoccupied land in the South and West. In fact one-half 
of the land of the South and two thirds of the land of the 
West is still unused. Now is the time for us to become the 
owners and users of our share of the land, before it is too 
late.’’303 


Had Washington directed one-half of the phe- 
nomenal energy he exhibited in the eighteen years 
news sand Courier, August 22, 1913. 

246 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of his prominence in endeavoring to keep the Ne- 
groes in the South, towards assisting them in ob- 
taining their share of the land in the West, what 
progress might they not have made? 

Highteen years ago, before the great world prob- 
lem of color had arisen, there was nothing to chill 
the zeal of the British Negrophilist; but in South 
Africa the British Negrophobe is increasing in num- 
bers and his influence is also being felt in Canada. 
Still there are opportunities for the Negro yet, if 
the leaders of the race will only awaken to the neces- 
sities of diffusion. But time and tide wait for no 
man. 

As has been attempted to be shown, the idea, not 
unreasonably entertained soon after the war be- 
tween the States, that there was apt to be with time, 
a greater and greater increase of Negro population 
in the five Southern States, considered as the Black 
Belt, is no longer tenable. 

Immediately after the war the Negroes were in 
a majority of 19,808 in this belt of contiguous States, 
which the processes and excesses of Reconstruction 
did raise to 168,965, discernable four years after its 
overthrow. But by 1890 this Negro majority had 
been reduced to 150,661 and by 1900 to 92,610. In 
the following decade this black majority through 
white immigration and black emigration, was re- 
placed by a white majority in the so called Black 
Belt of 423,717; which now has risen to over a mil- 
lion and a quarter. The increase of whites has been 
greatest in the two States in the center of the belt. 
In the State of Alabama from the conclusion of the 


247 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


war, the increase of the white majority has been 
steady and continuous, rising from 45,874 in 1870 
to 320,566 in 1910 and to 546,980 in 1920. The in- 
crease of the white majority in Georgia was less 
rapid. Reconstruction had cut down the white ma- 
jority of 93,884 to 81,773 by 1870, but from the 
overthrow of Reconstruction it rose to 254,849 in 
1910, and has now reached 482,749. lLouisiana’s 
Negro majority of 2,114 in 1870, Reconstruction had 
raised to 28,701 by 1880, but in the forty years 
which have followed, it has now become 396,354 
whites in excess of blacks. 

In the other two States progress has been slower. 

South Carolina, laden with Negroes to the very 
gunwales by the subjects of “King Cotton,” emerged 
from the storm of war with a Negro majority of 
126,147, which Reconstruction speedily increased in 
“The Prostrate State” to 213,229 by 1880, a num- 
ber so far beyond her small white population, that 
even with a decreasing rate of increase, the black 
majority had increased by 1890 to 226,926, the de- 
crease of which in 1900 was barely perceptible; but 
by 1910 had fallen to 156,681 and in 1920 was still 
further reduced to 45,941. And even Mississippi, 
whose Negro majority rose steadily from 31,305 
in 1870, to 266,430 in 1900, dropped in 1910 to 
223,338, which by 1920 had fallen to 81,222. This is 
in all probability due to the migration which Carlyle 
McKinley predicted in 1889, although Hoffman, who 
published a painstaking work in 1896, thinking to 
establish that the Negro was dying out, as “in the 
Northern States the colored race does not hold his 


248 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


own, for the deaths out number the births,” yet con- 
cluded that the Negro was— 


“in the South as a permanent factor, with neither the ability 
nor the inclination to leave.’’304 


As in the North and West the numbers of the 
Negroes have since 1870 to 1920 risen from 250,000 
to 1,550,000 and in the South during the same time 
from 4,585,000 to 8,990,000, the two assertions above 
do not hang together. 


When we consider the view advanced by that great 
writer, the author of “The American Common- 
wealth’, we find it very difficult for him to shake 
himself loose from the impression that the Negro 
must remain in the South, and that it is best that 
he should, although what he says, himself, would 
seem to disprove the assertion. He finds first evi- 
dently by consideration of the census figures up to 
1900, that: 


“It is thus clear that the Negro center of population is 
more southward and that the African is leaving the colder, 
higher and drier lands for regions more resembling his 
ancient seats in the Old World.”35 


Carlyle McKinley, with more prophetic ken, eleven 
years earlier foresaw this, but also beyond what is 
shown above, that from this region the Negro would 
move out, North and West. 


Mr. Bryce finds: 


“In these hot lowlands the Negro lives much as he lived 
on the plantations in the old days, except that he works 
less, because a moderate amount of labor produces enough 


804Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies, p 
so Bryce, American Commonwealth Vol. i, Bev. Ed. p. 513, 


249 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


for his bare subsistence . .. he is scarcely at all in contact 
with any one above his own condition. Thus there are 
places, the cities especially, where the Negro is improving 
industrially because he has to work hard and comes into 
constant relation with the whites; and others where he need 
work very little, and where being left to his own resources, 
he is in danger of relapsing into barbarism.” 


The writer lays it down specifically: 


“Contact with the whites is the chief condition for the 
progress of the Negro. Where he is isolated or where he 
greatly outnumbers the whites, his advance will be re- 
tarded ... Yet he is often no better off at the North where 
the white laborers may refuse to work with him and where 
he has no more chance than in the South of receiving, ex- 
cept in very exceptional cases, any sort of social recognition 
from any class of whites, while in the cities everywhere he 
is met by the competition of the generally more diligent and 
more intelligent whites. So the Negro is after all better 
off in the South and on the land, than anywhere else.’”’306 


Contrasting the views of Booker Washington and 
DuBois, he finds a cultured group which declare 
they do not seek social equality with the whites, yet 
in spite of the fact, stressed, that where he is isolated 
or where he greatly outnumbers the whites, his ad- 
vance will be retarded, a condition of the South, 
building upon such a foundation, Mr. Bryce does 
not hesitate to declare, that because, at the North, 
“the white laborers may refuse to work with him 
. . . the Negro is after all better at the South.” 

Apparently in the view of this great Englishman, 
the risk of a relapse into barbarism is not as serious 
a matter to the Negro, as exposure to the cold 
shoulder or angry scowl of a white laborer; and so 
err ee ee Commonwealth, Vol. II, pp. 515-537-552. 

250 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


he dismisses the Negro and his future with an at- 
tempt to epitomize the philosophy of Dr. Washing- 
ton into what is really Mr. Bryce’s imperious con- 
viction, viz, that there is: 

“no use in resisting patent facts, that all that the Negro 
can do at present, and the most effective thing, that, with a 
view to the future, he could do, is to raise himself in in- 
telligence, knowledge, industry, thrift, whatever makes for 
self help and self respect.” 

But even while this epitome was appearing in 
print for the first time, the inability of the great 
author to fully plumb the depths of Dr. Washing- 
ton’s political philosophy was shown by the New 
York Age, the leading colored paper of the United 
States, which, upon the nomination of Mr. Taft 
for the presidency in 1908, published what was as- 
serted to be the facsimile of the telegram sent him 
by Dr. Washington, to the effect that he expected to 
see him elected and by his (Washington’s) people, 
as no doubt he was, to a very great degree, by their 
votes in the Northern States. 


If then— 

“a systematic effort has been made to settle colored people 
in Indiana, to hold that State in the Republican column’’*°7— 
surely a way had been found for the colored man to 
do more than Mr. Bryce thought he could. He can 
move out of that section where in mass his vote was 
destructive into that one, in which it is sought, and 
there cast it for what he deems his interest. 

If in 1908, the Negroes moved into the North for 
the purpose of supporting Mr. Taft and defeating 
" sHart, Southern South, p. 113. 

251 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Mr. Bryan, they did what they had a right to do, 
and under conditions which made it hardly possible 
that it could inflict much damage, even if the vote 
was cast more as a commodity of merchandise is 
disposed of, than as an exercise of a free man’s 
franchise; for no matter for whom cast, it could 
hardly swamp the opposition. When, as a mass of 
delegates from the South, however, four years later 
in 1912, the Negroes assisted Mr. Taft’s friends in 
party convention assembled, to secure for him the 
renomination for the presidency, against the wish 
of one, deemed by many as the most powerful cleans- 
ing factor of the Republican party, the evil effects 
flowing from so great and determinative occupation 
with politics by the Negroes of the South, became 
so apparent to many earnest Northern men, that the 
reported view of Mr. Roosevelt, as to the distinction 
between the exercise of the right by the Negro in 
the South and out of it, did not seem so strange. 

To extreme Negrophiles, of course, it is merely an 
indication of the marvelous progress of what is 
called the Southern “color psychosis.” It is in fact 
one of the many illustrations constantly appearing, 
of the realization of the fact that, when invested too 
swiftly and fully with power and privilege, back- 
ward people are apt to stumble; and in this connec- 
tion it might be well to consider the morality of the 
Negroes of South Africa, thirteen years after the 
overthrow of the Boer republics, under whose rule 
they had been protected from the oppression of the 
more savage members of their race; but neverthe- 
less kept in a distinctly menial condition. 


252 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


A report appearing in 1913 in that country is, in 
itself, some evidence of the value of the suggestion 
made by the author of this work to the great New 
York paper, which in 1890 had invited ideas to be 
suggested to it. 


An impartial study of the color psychosis of these 
two little white republics in a sea of blacks, cut off 
to a great degree from the influence of European 
and American ideas, as they were in 1890; but 
evolving not only a people, stated by the London 
Lancet to be the finest physical specimens in the 
world; but also a Botha and a Smuts, surely must 
have been of great educational value to the United 
States. Here is the report ten years after South 
African Reconstruction: 


“Cape Town, June 9, 1913: The report of the committee 
appointed to inquire into the assaults by natives on white 
women shows that the misgivings on the subject were only 
too well founded. The figures during the twelve years (from 
the period of the overthrow of the republics to the date) 
rise from a total of eleven convictions in 1901 to seventy in 
1912. The increase is most in Transvaal, next in Natal and 
then in Cape Colony. Generally speaking the Commission 
attributes the increase mainly to diminished respect on the 
part of the natives for the whites, this in turn being due to 
a variety of causes, chiefly to the contact of natives with 
degenerate or criminal whites. A potent cause of this 
criminallity and degeneracy on the Rand is the illicit liquor 
traffic. The Commission also uses extremely plain language 
regarding what is described as the almost criminal careless- 
ness of white women in the treatment of their native house- 
boys. It has been the custom to allow them to bring the 
early coffee into the bedroom of the mistress of the house 
and that of her daughters, where he has an opportunity 
of seeing them in a state of undress they would not dream 


253 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of showing themselves in to a white man. The Commission 
states that cases, though few, have undoubtedly occurred, in 
which the white mistress or servants have played Potiphar’s 
wife to the house boy’s Joseph. In other words charges have 
been trumped up. The chief legal recommendation is the 
imposition of a penalty on the intercourse of a male black 
with a female white or a male white with a female black.’ 


The Englishman, in 1921 is just commencing to 
see some virtue in the Boer who, until very recently, 
has shared with the South Carolinian the distinction 
of being the most vilified of all people. Like the 
South Carolinian, the Boer believes that, between the 
races, “familiarity breeds contempt.’ Both peoples 
hold to their views very tenaciously. No change has 
ever induced the white people of South Carolina 
to alter their attitude against divorce. Perhaps 
this is one of the reasons which has induced the ad- 
vanced thinkers of the higher civilizations to genera- 
lize most fiercely against the white inhabitants of 
this small State of the Union. 

In 1910, Sir Harry Johnston produced his book 
“The Negro in the New World.” The author, a 
traveler and student, at the suggestion of President 
Roosevelt, brought to the consideration of his sub- 
ject much knowledge and not a little temper. The 
aim of the book is popularity. From a scroll below 
the map of the Western Hemisphere, the heads of 
Dr. Burghardt DuBois and Booker T. Washington 
project, silent witnesses to an entirely colored 
United States with the exception of the tips of New 
England and Florida; but as all of England, France 
and Italy are colored, no reflection is evidently in- 
~ 88London Times, June 27, 19138. 

254 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


tended. In his preface, with amusing naivete, he 
confesses: 

“Dealing with slavery under the British, I feel obliged to 
show with what terrible cruelties this institution was con- 
nected in the greater part of the British West Indies, and 
possibly also in British Guiana before 1834. Nor did these 
cruelties cease entirely with the abolition of the Slave Trade 
and Slavery. They were continued under various disguises 
until they culminated in the Jamaica Revolt of Moratt Bay 
in 1865. Since 1868 the history of the British West Indies, 
so far as the treatment of the Negro and the colored man is 
concerned has been wholly satisfactory, taking into con- 
sideration all the difficulties of the situation.’ 


When he reaches that part of his book which is 
to show: 

“How bad was the treatment of the Negro in the South- 
eastern States of the Union, between, let us say, 1790 and 
1860”—he says—“This story should be written over again, 
lest we forget.’’310 

Evidently there is no need to take into considera- 
tion any “of the difficulties of the situation” in the 
Southeastern States of the Union. Sir Harry 
Johnston has been called upon to curse the South- 
eastern States of the Union, and being a firmer type 
of man than Balaam, he does it thoroughly. But 
incidentally he exclaims impatiently : 


“Haiti’ I have tried to show is not as black as she has 
been painted.” 


To which he adds the following rich, dark, daub: 


“For very shame she should cease to make the Negro 


race a laughing stock.’’311 
8Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. VIII. 
310Tbid. p. IX. 
311T bid. p. X. 


255 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The author has not proceeded a page in his chap- 
ter, “Slavery in the United States” before he begins 
to inveigh against South Carolina and Charleston. 
He tells his readers: 


“In South Carolina the condition of the slaves was often 
one of great hardship, and the slave laws were very cruel.” 


He writes of slave insurrections in South Carolina 
in 1710, 1720, and 1740, and states that in 1760 there 
was a slave population of 400,000 in Virginia, South 
Carolina and Georgia; but he fails to mention that 
during this period these people were all under Brit- 
ish control. He actually makes it a complaint of 
South Carolina that: “these were the people so 
admired by Gladstone, Kingsley, Huxley and Car- 
lyiew 

The more he writes the angrier he gets with South 
Carolina: 


“The election of Abraham Lincoln was the last episode 
which decided South Carolina—protagonist of the Slave 
Powers and rightly so called, for it has been from first to 
last the wickedest of the Slave States—to secede from the 
Union.’’313 


But he cannot keep away from 1740: 


“It was in South Carolina in the first quarter of the 
eighteenth century, that life was made unbearable and 
short for the unfortunate African, and that being driven to 
mad despair, the Negroes broke out in the Charleston revolt 
of 1740, and attempted (small blame to them) to slay the 
pitiless devils who were their masters.’’314 


312Tbid. p. 380. 
313Tbid. p. 363. 
34Tbid, p. 368. 


256 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The truth about this insurrection is as follows. 
No insurrection occurred in South Carolina in 1740; 
but in 1739, when as Sir Harry Johnston failed to 
state, the province was under British control: 


“An outbreak occurred, undoubtedly instigated by the 
Spaniards at St. Augustine. Emissaries had been sent per- 
suading the Negroes to fly from their masters to Florida, 
where liberty and protection awaited them... At length 
on the 9th of September, a number of Negroes assembled 
at Stono and began their movement by breaking open a 
store, killing two young men who guarded the warehouse and 
plundering it for guns and ammunition. Thus provided with 
arms they chose one of their number captain and marched 
in the direction of Florida with colors flying and drums beat- 
ing. On their way they entered the house of Mr. Godfrey, 
murdered him, his wife and children, took all the arms in 
the house and setting fire to it proceeded to Jacksonborough. 
In their march they plundered and burnt every house, killed 
the white people, and compelled other Negroes to join them 
.. . For fifteen miles they had spread desolation through all 
the plantations on their way. Fortunately having found rum 
in some houses and drinking freely of it, they halted and 
began to sing and dance. During these rejoicings the militia 
came up and took positions to prevent escape, then advanc- 
ing and killing some, the remainder of the Negroes dispersed 
and fled to the woods. Many ran back to the plantations to 
which they belonged in the hope of escaping suspicion of 
having joined in the rising; but the greater part were taken 
and tried, some of them who had been compelled to join 
were pardoned; the leaders suffered death. Twenty one 
whites and forty-four Negroes lost their lives in this insurrec- 
tion.’’315 


There was no Charleston revolt in 1740. 


“In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances 
were those of 1712 and 1741 at New York, both of which 


%15McCrady, S. C. Under Royal Govt. p. 185. 
257 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


were more notable for the frenzy of the public than for the 
formidableness of the menace... The rebels to the num- 
ber of twenty-three provided themselves with guns, hatchets, 
knives and swords and chose the dark of the moon in the small 
hours of an April night to set a house afire and slaughter the 
citizens as they flocked thither. But their gun fire caused 
the Governor to send soldiers from the battery with such 
speed that only nine whites had been killed and several others 
wounded when the plotters were routed. Six of these killed 
themselves to escape capture, but when the woods were beaten 
and the town searched next day and an emergency court sat 
upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than 
the whole conspiracy had comprised. .. Of those convicted, 
one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in 
chains, nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the 
stake, one of these being sentenced ‘to be burned with a slow 
fire that he may continue in torment for eight or ten hours 
and continue burning until he be dead and consumed to 
ashes,’ ’’316 

“The commotion in 1741 was a panic among the whites of 
high and low degree, prompted in sequel to a robbery and a 
series of fires by the disclosures of Mary Burton, a young 
white servant concerning her master John Hughson and the 
confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of 
many aliases, but most commonly called Peggy, who was an 
inmate of Hughson’s disreputable house and a prostitute to 
Negro slaves . .. Hughson and his wife and the infamous 
Peggy were promptly hanged, and likewise John Ury, who 
was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a con- 
spirator; and twenty-nine Negroes were sent with similar 
speed to the gallows or stake, while eighty others were de- 
ported. . . . Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror stricken 
at the stake made somewhat stereotyped revelations; but the 
desire of the officials to stay the execution with a view to a 
definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of tumult by the 
throng of resentful spectators.’’317 


%16Phillips, American Negro Slavery, p. 469. 
37Tbid. p. 470. 


258 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


In the more scholarly portions of this book, the 
author invites comparison with the great work of 
Ripley, the American, which unavoidably detracts 
from the confidence of the reader in the wealth of 
expression of the Englishman. The book is a mass 
of information, in which much prejudice is apparent. 
When he gets down to advice, the writer informs 
the reader that what he regards as “a matter of 
crucial importance to the civilized Christian 
Negro,’’*8 Mr. Roosevelt evidently thought non- 
sense, for that great American informed him, that 
he would never— 

“get the colored people of the United States to dress dif- 
ferently to their white fellow citizens.’’?19 

Sir Harry wished— 

“the leaders of the Negro people to inveigh against these 
garments (frock coats and silk hats) which only look well 
on two white men out of ten, and never look other than ugly 
and inappropriate on a person of dark complexion.’’?2° 

It is hardly necessary to make any great endeavor 
to discover the exact meaning of the author’s mouth 
filling phrase: 

“If the Imperial destiny of the English speaking peoples 
of North America is to be achieved, they must expect to see 
their flag or flags covering nationally many peoples of non- 


Caucasian race wearing the shadowed livery of the burnished 
sun,’’321 


For while he tells us that: 


“The eleven States of the Secession have remained to 
this day (1910) apart from the rest of America in their 


domestic policy towards the Negro and people of color with 
*18Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. 413. 
s19Tbid. p. 415. 
820Tbid. p. 413. 
%1Tbid. p. X. 


259 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


any drop of black blood in their veins. Here alone—except 
perhaps in the Transvaal, Orange State and Natal of Brit- 
ish South Africa—does the racial composition of a citizen 
(and not mere dirtiness, drunkenness, or inability to pay) 
exclude him or her from municipal or national privilege and 
public conveniences otherwise open to all and paid for by 
all.222 Yet with all these imperfections in the social ac- 
ceptance of the colored people of the United States—imper- 
fections which with time and patience and according to the 
merits of the Negro will disappear—the main fact was evident 
to me after a tour through the Eastern and Southern States 
of North America; that nowhere in the world—certainly 
not in Africa—has the Negro been given such a chance of 
mental and physical development as in the United States.’”323 


If Sir Harry Johnston, or for the matter of that, 
his patron, President Roosevelt, had only been able 
to study that neglected and impoverished Negro 
seer, the only one of the teachers of his people who 
gave his blood for their freedom, proving his faith ° 
by his works and not by mere lip service, the repu- 
diation of whom by the Negroes and their leaders is 
the severest indictment which could be drawn 
against the race, they might have been wiser. But 
from time immemorial the call to the prophet has 
always been: “Prophesy unto us smooth things.”— 
and W. Hannibal Thomas having fought in the ranks 
of the Union army and lived in the midst of Recon- 
struction, knew a little too much, despite his exal- 
tation of the civilization of New England, and his 
criticism of the South’s attempt in 1865 to mould 
again its own, apart from slavery, to ever be ac- 
cepted by those who had participated in or were 
responsible for Reconstruction. 


323Tbid. p. 476. 
333] bid, p. 477. 


260 


CHAPTER XiIilI 


The American Historical Association founded 
about 1889 has accomplished a great work in purify- 
ing the sources from which history has been drawn. 
It has stimulated the study of history and has af- 
forded the field and opportunity for effort. By the 
Act of Incorporation it shall report annually its pro- 
ceedings and the condition of historical study in 
America, to the Secretary of the Smithsonian In- 
stitute, who shall communicate to Congress the whole 
of such reports or such portion thereof as he shall 
see fit. 

In the year 1909, the President of the Association, 
invited, from certain selected individuals, papers on 
the Negro question limited to 1800 words, for one 
of the sessions of the Association. This was a limi- 
tation which every white person accepting should 
have scrupulously observed and no one should have 
accepted who was not willing to exert himself se- 
riously. Yet the tendency of not a few whites to 
allow themselves always a little playfulness when- 
ever discussing this subject seems ineradicable. To 
the one colored scholar, who accepted the invitation, 
the occasion afforded an opportunity not to be per- 
mitted to slip by unimproved, and with admirable 
nerve, he selected the darkest decade discernible in 
the consideration of the subject, as disclosed in the 
history of the United States, and addressed himself 
to a discussion of ‘Reconstruction and Its Benefits,” 
in a paper of about 10,000 words. 

In the disregard which he thereby showed of the 
terms of his invitation he was justified by his color 


261 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


and his brains and the merit of his work won for 
him the widest dissemination of his view. Like Sir 
Harry Johnston’s more elaborate book it is polemi- 
cal; but superior in taste and style, being free from 
the little querelous snarls with which the English- 
man garnished his treatise; for if there were sneers 
in DuBois’s exposition they were couched in lan- 
guage which passes muster among well bred people; 
while the fact that he was in reality an advocate, 
with a brief to maintain, accorded him license for 
such. 

The opening could hardly be improved upon by 
any special pleader. 


Writing in 1909, he declares: 


“There is danger today that between the intense feeling 
of the South and the conciliatory spirit of the North grave 
injustice will be done the Negro American in the history of 
Reconstruction. Those who see in Negro suffrage the cause 
of the main evils of Reconstruction must remember that if 
there had not been a single freedman left in the South after 
war the problems of Reconstruction would still have been 
grave. Property in slaves to the extent of perhaps two 
thousand million dollars had suddenly disappeared. One 
thousand five hundred more millions representing the Con- 
federate war debt, had largely disappeared. Large amounts 
of real estate and other property had been destroyed, in- 
dustry had been disorganized, 250,000 men had been killed 
and many more maimed. With this went the moral effect 
of an unsuccessful war with all its letting down of social 
standards and quickening of hatred and discouragement—a 
situation which would make it difficult under any circum- 
stances to reconstruct a new government and a new civiliza- 
tion. Add to all this the presence of four million freedmen 
and the situation is further complicated.’’324 


%4DuBois, Reconstruction and Its Benefits Am. Hist. Rev. Vol. IV, 
Diemioke 


262 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


That the training and the treatment of these ex- 
slaves became a central problem of Reconstruction, 
he admits; yet claims that three agencies, the Negro 
church; the Negro school and the Freedmen’s Bu- 
reau undertook the solution, without which, he main- 
tains, it would have been far graver. But he ab- 
solutely disregards that product of ante-bellum 
Southern civilization then in the South, 132,819°75 
free persons of color, many of whom were morally 
and mentally well fitted for what the Black Codes 
designed to give them, the suffrage. This element 
of the Southern population together with the major- 
ity of the House slaves would have probably fur- 
nished a base of about ten per cent of the total 
Negro population on which the new civilization 
would have been reared, had the South been per- 
mitted to test its plan. Having declared that the 
economic condition of the eleven States at the close 
of the war was “‘pitiable, their fear of Negro free- 
dom genuine,’ Dr. DuBois maintains, “‘yet it was 
reasonable to expect from them something less than 
repression and utter reaction toward slavery.” 


Admitting that: 


“To some extent this expectation was fulfilled: the aboli- 
tion of slavery was recognized and the civil rights of owning 
property and appearing as a witness in cases in which he 
was a party were generally granted the Negro.’’326— 


he promptly contradicts his own admission, with 
the assertion: 

s>Compendium Ninth Census U. S. 14 

acne Reconstruction and Its Barents Am, Hist. Rev. Vol. IV, 
p. 


263 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“The Codes spoke for themselves. They have often been 
reprinted and quoted. No open minded student can read 
them without being convinced that they meant nothing more 
nor less than slavery in daily toil.’327 


Is this true? Can any student be absolutely open 
minded? A seer is a receiver and revealer of truths. 
Such a being can possibly approach the considera- 
tion of a subject with an open mind. One may 
imagine Socrates so approaching a subject; but by 
what process, by what mental cathartic, does one, 
who studies, divest his mind of all preconceived 
ideas of the subject every time he considers a theory 
concerning that which has interested him sufficiently 
to lead him to seek to know more of it? 

No, the vast mass of us approach those subjects, 
when we are sincerely desirous of truth in the spirit 
of that individual who exclaimed to Christ—“Lord 
I believe, help thou mine unbelief.”” When the brok- 
en, beaten South attempted to frame the Codes, 
which no Negro has ever been able to consider judi- 
cially, the survivors could not possibly approach the 
condition they were in with an open mind. The 
greatest mind that has ever considered our great ex- 
periment in government, the French student De Toc- 
queville and that strong but shallower mind, that 
for so many years had with its resolutions over- 
shadowed all others in the South, united in the dic- 
tum. Abolition means Africanization for the South. 
But the whites of the South were to a great extent 
British and Northern Irish in stock. They were 
eminently conservative. A stock greater in defeat 

327T pid. 


264 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


than in victory, as history has shown the British 
to be. 


To obtain additional strength with which to with- 
stand the flood of ignorance and incompetence let 
loose or about to break loose, they accepted the 
leadership of the poor white Andrew Johnson, de- 
spite the repugnance they felt for him, as keen and 
lively as any Englishman ever felt for Joe Chamber- 
lain or Lloyd George or Ramsay McDonald. They 
did more. As far as legislation could affect it, they 
extended social equality to the least darkened of 
the dark race by which they were surrounded. The 
political principle, upon which they sought to ad- 
just themselves to the changed condition, was based 
apparently upon the thought that if all the Southern 
whites and that proportion of the Colored popula- 
tion constituting about one-tenth, reasonably the 
most elevated in the minds of the theorists, from 
the fact that they closest approached the whites in 
physical texture, united, such union must strengthen 
the rulers even as it weakened the ruled. Dr. Du- 
Bois therefore is quite wrong when he intimates 
with some generosity, that the Black Codes were 
framed under hasty excitement, in declaring: 

“To be sure it was not a time to look for calm, cool, 
thoughtful action on the part of the white South.’’28 

No, whatever may eventually be found to be the 
character of the Black Codes of the beaten South, 
they bear upon their faces the imprint of cool, calm, 
thoughtful action. Even the most cursory considera- 
tion of them will disclose that they were framed 

281 bid, 


265 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


more for the irresponsible freedman than the freed- 
men in general; for instance, if the freedman owned 
a farm or had a permit, the possession of gun, pistol 
or sword, otherwise forbidden, was not denied. On 
the other hand the inhibition of the right of sale or 
barter of domestic produce did not apply to the 
Negro generally; but to the servant under contract 
with a master engaged in husbandry, and not even 
then, if the servant had written evidence from such 
master, or from a person authorized by him, or from 
a District Judge, whose oath specifically required 
him to do what was required by law ‘“‘without pre- 
judice for or against color.’’**® In addition the ser- 
vant was given the right to— 


“Depart from the master’s service for an insufficient sup- 
ply of wholesome food; for an unauthorized battery upon 
his own person or one of his family, not committed in de- 
fense of the person, family, guests or agents of the master, 
nor to prevent a crime or aggravated misdemeanor.’?20 


The law went further. It gave the servant the 
right of departure coupled with the right to recover 
wages due for service rendered up to the time of 
his departure, for any— 


“invasion of the conjugal rights of the servant, or his (em- 
ployer’s) failure to pay wages when due.’’31 


And not even the death of the master terminated 
the contract, without the assent of the servant, for 
the enforcement of which the servant had a lien as 
high as rent. And when wrongfully discharged 

s22Statutes S. C. Vol. XIII, p. 279. 

830Tbid. p. 298. 

331Tbid. 


266 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the servant was entitled to recover wages for the 
whole period of service, according to the contract.**? 


That the master was given the right to adminis- 
ter corporal punishment to the servant under some 
conditions cannot be denied; but the phraseology of 
the South Carolina Act is: 


“The master may moderately correct servants who have 
made contracts and are under eighteen years of age’’—#33 
but it also commanded: 


“It shall also be his duty to protect his servant from vio- 
lence by others in his presence.”234 


Yet it specifically provided that: 


“Corporal punishment is intended to include only such 
modes of punishment, not affecting life or limb, as are used 
in the army or navy of the United States, adapted in kind 
and degree to the nature of the offense.’’35 

Finally, not to prolong the discussion, when we 
note that the servant was not liable civilly or crim- 
inally for any act done by the command of the 
master, for any tort on the master’s premises*** and 
that the former slave holder was not permitted to 
dispossess the non paying helpless former slave, for 
a year and a month from the occupancy of dwellings 
belonging to the former master, but occupied with- 
out any return by the former slave,*?** and what 
elaborate provisions in detail were made for the care 
of such in his or her helpless condition, we will find 
that we look in vain in England, old or New, for 
such humanitarian legislation, at this date. Why 

S21 bid. . 

833T bid. p. 296. 

84Thid. p. 297. 

SST bid. p. 277. 


886Tbid. p. 299. 
SII pid. 


267 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


then were the Codes overthrown? Dr. DuBois is 
prejudiced and naturally so. He is not as well in- 
formed as he deems himself to be; but he desires to 
be fair and just; and so we have from this, the 
most cultured member of the colored race in the 
United States, the real reason for “‘Reconstruction 
and its Benefits.” 


“The difficulties that stared Reconstruction politicians in 
the face were these: (a) They must act quickly. (b) Eman- 
cipation had increased the political power of the South by 
one sixth; could this increased political power be put in 
the hands of those, who in defense of slavery had disrupted 
the Union?”338 


So, the terrific losses, which he himself itemizes 
were not enough. The beaten South was to be 
manacled. And how does he picture the victors in 
that dreadful hour? 


“There might have been less stealing in the South during 
Reconstruction without negro suffrage but it is certainly 
highly instructive to remember that the mark of the thief 
which dragged its slime across nearly every great Northern 
state and almost up to the Presidential chair could not cer- 
tainly in those cases be charged against the vote of black 
men. This was the day when a national secretary of war 
was caught stealing, a Vice President presumably took bribes, 
a private Secretary of the President, a chief clerk of the 
Treasury and eighty-six government officials stole millions 
in the whisky frauds, while the Credit Mobilier filched fifty 
millions and bribed the government to an extent never re- 
vealed; not to mention less distinguished thieves like 
T weed.’’339 

Cee Reconstruction and Its Benefits Am. Hist. Rev. Vol. XIV, 
” sorbid. p. 790. 


268 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Remember this is not a Southerner, black or 
white; but the most cultured of Northern colored 
men, who so describes the conquering East from 
which he sprang. 


It is scarcely possible to state more comprehen- 
sively in less space than that in which Dr. DuBois 
describes the effects of Congressional Reconstruc- 
tion: 


““‘When incompetency gains political power in an extrav- 
agant age the result is widespread dishonesty.”?40 


But he palliates this with the following: 


“The dishonesty in the Reconstruction of the South was 
helped on by three circumstances: 


1. The former dishonesty of the political South. 
2. The presence of many dishonest Northern politicians. 


8. The temptation to Southern politicians at once to profit 
by the dishonesty and to discredit Negro government. 


4. The poverty of the negro.’’41 


He fails to furnish any authorized evidence of the 
first; but the three last should be accepted as in some 
degree exculpatory of the Negroes. 


There is something almost pathetic in Dr. Du- 
Bois’s description of the Negroes’ contribution to 
Reconstruction : 


“Undoubtedly there were many ridiculous things connected 
with Reconstruction governments: the placing of ignorant 
field hands who could neither read nor write in the Legisla- 
ture, the golden spitoons of South Carolina, the enormous 
printing bill of Mississippi—all these were extravagant and 
funny, and yet somehow to one who sees beneath all that is 


LD 
s41Tbid. 


269 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


bizarre, the real human tragedy of the upward striving of 
down-trodden men, the groping for light among people born 
in darkness, there is less tendency to laugh and gibe than 
among shallower minds and easier consciences. All that is 
funny is not bad.’’342 


And this he follows with what he means to be an 
indictment: 


“_the greatest stigma on the white South is not that it 
opposed Negro suffrage and resented theft and incompe- 
tence, but that when it saw the reform movement growing 
and even in some cases triumphing, and a larger & a larger 
number of black voters learning to vote for honesty and 
ability, it still preferred a Reign of Terror to a campaign 
of education, and disfranchised Negroes instead of punish- 
ing rascals.’’343 


When we reflect that the Confederate generals, 
Wade Hampton, Kershaw and McGowan, as has been 
shown, all supported the revolt of Delany, Cain and 
William Hannibal Thomas, against Chamberlain 
and R. B. Elliott in 1874 in South Carolina, and that 
in the columns of “The Crisis,” today, Elliott is 
eulogized as a great representative of the colored 
race; while no mention has ever appeared of those 
two Northern Negroes who most conspicuously op- 
posed the evils of Reconstruction, Martin Delany 
and William Hannibal Thomas, we can only acquit 
Dr. DuBois of insincerity on the ground of rank 
carelessness and immovable prejudice. 

The summing up of this very interesting defense 
of Reconstruction and plea for the Negroes as law- 


makers is unquestionably an able presentation: 


POlbid. (Ds t0a. 
PST Dida. Uae 


270 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“Reconstruction constitutions practically unaltered were 
kept in: 


EPEAT Te ENE Sey 8 SSCS) Bsc oe rest snacn sn 2sdess-duccucsecuese 17 years 
DOPE ETA 1S 7 ae Si Soca calgn nye deseniectedstecndanste 32 years 
PU CALOUME SL GOORLO GO cocscsetncecencarcherneutece 27 years 
MMRTE EID e te PSO M1 OOO oe cerns ccc nc irasacececccsevucnsees 22 years 


Even in the case of States like Alabama, Georgia, North 
Carolina and Louisiana, which adopted new constitutions to 
signify the overthrow of Negro rule, the new constitutions 
are nearer the model of the Reconstruction document than 
they are to the previous constitutions. They differ from 
the Negro Constitution in minor details, but very little in 
general conception. Besides this there stands on the statute 
books of the South today law after law passed between 
1868 and 1876 and which has been found wise effective and 
worthy of preservation. Paint the carpet bag governments 
and Negro rule as black as may be, the fact remains that the 
essence of the revolution which the overturning of the Negro 
Governments made was to put these black men and their 
friends out of power. Outside of the curtailing of expenses 
and stopping of extravagance, not only did their successors 
make few changes in the work which these Legislatures 
and Conventions had done, but they largely carried out their 
plans, followed their suggestions, and strengthened their in- 
stitutions. Practically the whole new growth of the South 
has been accomplished under laws which black men helped 
to frame thirty years ago. I know of no greater compli- 
ment to Negro suffrage.”344 


It would be idle to deny that these Reconstruc- 
tion constitutions were other than most effective. 

William Hannibal Thomas, who might be fitly de- 
scribed as in charge of the rear guard when the 
Negro government fell in South Carolina and who 
has criticised the Black Codes even more severely 
than Dr. DuBois, states: 
~ 84Ibid. p. 799. 

271 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“The Constitutions of the Reconstructed States were 
framed by white men under the direction and with the ap- 
proval of the best legal intelligence of America.’’345 


They were framed to complete the conquest of the 
overthrown States, Dr. Dodd puts it thus: 


“The cause of the planters had gone down in irretrievable 
disaster. For forty years they had contended with their 
rivals of the North, and having staked all on the wager of 
battle they had lost. Just four years before they had entered 
with unsurpassed zeal and enthusiasm upon the gigantic 
task of winning their independence. They had made the 
greatest fight in history up to that time. Lost the flower 
of their manhood and wealth untold. They now renewed 
once and for all time their allegiance to the Union, which 
had up to that time been an experiment, a government of 
uncertain powers. More than three hundred thousand lives 
and not less than four billions of dollars had been sacrificed 
in the fight of the South. The planter culture, the semi- 
feudalism of the ‘Old South’ was annihilated, while the in- 
dustrial and financial system of the East was triumphant. 
The cost to the North had been six hundred thousand lives 
and an expense to the governments, State and National, of 
at least five billion dollars. But the East was the mistress 
of the United States, and the social and economic ideals of 
that section were to be stamped permanently upon the 
country.’’346 


The war having ended in a complete conquest of 
the South and a sentimental control of the vigorous 
West, expanded by the East as it exploited the broken 
South; through the destruction of the codes and 
the imposition of Congressional Reconstruction, the 
whites of the South were welded into a new mass, 
cruder and tougher and not unnaturally quite inimi- 
cal to the Negro who had been made to rule over 





5Thomas, The American Negro, p. 307. 
“Dodd, Expansion and Conflict p. 328. 


272 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


them, until by revolutionary methods they had over- 
thrown such. That they, the Negroes, and the Wes- 
tern whites had all been subjected to the control of 
the East as thoroughly as economic laws could sub- 
ject them to it, was not for decades appreciated in 
the South or West. 

Had Lincoln not been assassinated and had he re- 
mained true to his Western ideals, he would have 
been broken on the wheel of capitalism as relentlessly 
as was his great Southern successor, who struck 
down Germany in her hour of triumph. But Lin- 
coln was spared that test and died without realizing 
the entire measure of his service to the Union and 
the whites who inhabited it; for to him the Negroes 
were a negligible quantity, despite all the phrases 
with which he utilized them, in his purpose of pre- 
serving the Union. Indeed it was not until the 
fountains of the great deep were broken in the 
World War, that the inevitable consequences of 
emancipation forced themselves upon public opinion, 
and, in this connection, a small episode, of the above 
related meeting of the American Historical Associa- 
tion in 1909, throws some light upon the state of 
mind of the East at that date. 

At the same meeting in which Dr. DuBois read 
his bold, elaborate and interesting defense of Con- 
gressional Reconstruction, the author of this study 
submitted, on request, a paper on the Negro ques- 
tion, in accordance with the limitations, which, while 
accepted and edited for publication by the Board, 
was not permitted publication in the Report of the 
Historical Association, Mr. Charles D. Walcott hav- 


273 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ing the power to exclude it from such, and using 
the power. That the skeleton piece of 1750 words 
was to some slight degree critical of the East is not 
to be denied; but if the Eastern scholars rose above 
their prejudices when presented with truth why 
could not the official? The gist of the little paper 
when printed does not appear very inflammatory. 


“Says a distinguished Northern writer—‘The North is 
learning every day by valuable experiences that there are 
vast differences in political capacity between the races.’ Cer- 
tainly nothing has afforded such an opportunity for the 
North to acquire these valuable experiences day by day, as 
the diffusion of the Negroes throughout the Union. 
Meanwhile as the masses in the South are reduced the Ne- 
groes will not constitute, to the degree they now do, the 
criminal class; their good qualities must become more notice- 
able and their bad ones excite less that intense or contemp- 
tuous regard, which has, in the minds of many Southern 
men, made Negro and criminal almost synonymous terms. 
The war made the Negro question a national question, and 
it is too late to say—‘the man of the South must be trusted 
to work out this (the evolution of the Negro race to higher 
conditions) in his own good time’ and that ‘he is charged with 
the burden and must bear it.’ That is a sectional attitude 
just to neither the Negro nor the white man of the South. 
In time and with greatly reduced numbers of the Negroes 
about him, the Southern white man may change the view, 
which inheritance of ideas almost forces him to hold, viz., 
that the Negro is essentially servile; but that is his sentiment 
today; and while, therefore, he may be best fitted to rule 
him as such, he is not constituted to assist him in the evolu- 
tion to a higher condition. As they spread out, the Negroes 
must come more and more in contact with all grades of our 
civilization and from such draw the lessons best adapted to 
their own development. The sentiment therefore, which 
would deny them this; which would seek to confine the 
masses to the South, deciding for them that it is their natural 


274 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


home and having but little sympathy for them beyond the 
pale, is in my opinion, the greatest obstacle to their ad- 
vancement and, to some degree, a cause of moral deteriora- 
tion of the higher race.*47 


But while Dr. DuBois and the author of this 
study, in response to the invitation of Dr. Hart, be- 
fore the historians of the United States were dis- 
cussing, each in his own way, a subject they thought 
of some importance, it is of interest to consider 
what was occupying the mind of the wisest and most 
neglected Negro in the United States, at the same 
time. About the same date William Hannibal 
Thomas wrote to the author of this study: 


“It has long been my dream to see all the railroads under 
one management. Therefore had I the influence and coopera- 
tion of others, I would procure a charter from the Congress 
of the United States creating a National Railway Company 
capitalized at fifteen billion of dollars and empowered to 
issue bonds for a like amount. Five great subdivisions 
would be created. All south of the Potomac river and east 
of the Mississippi would constitute the Southern division. 
New England the Eastern division. New York and the 
states north and east of the Mississippi, would form the 
central division. Westward of that great river there would 
be a northern and southern Pacific division. Such in brief 
is the scheme I have in mind and, as an economical factor 
in National uplift, I know of but one other thing that would 
surpass it.348 


We might measure the scope of this Negro’s dream 
in the autumn of 1909, by the following news item 
of April 17, 1928, which apparently was only another 
dream: 


*%7Paper, American Hist. Asso. 1909. 
*48Thomas, Letter to author, November 20, 1909. 


275 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“Legislation to make affective the plans being worked 
out by the interstate commerce commission for consolidation 
and regional supervision of the railroad systems of the 
country will be undertaken in the next Congress, Chair- 
man Cummins of the Senate Interestate Commerce Com- 
mittee said today, after a discussion of the railroad problem 
with President Harding—‘I think consolidation for the rail- 
way system as initiated in the transportation act is the only 
means of gaining the efficiency that the country requires 
of the railroads,’ said Senator Cummins. Moreover it seems 
to me to be the only method of bringing down freight rates 
on commodities on which the rate must be lowered.’’49 


Whatever difference of opinion may exist amongst 
railway experts as to the merits of the legislation 
concerning railroads which the Iowa senator has 
made his name synonymous with, few doubt his 
knowledge. Yet he would seem to be just about 
fourteen years behind the neglected Ohio Negro, 
whose opportunities were restricted to two sessions 
of the South Carolina legislature in Reconstruction 
days. Is there anything that has ever been resolved 
with regard to railroads better calculated to serve 
the general public, than that introduced by Thomas, 
when opposing the most brilliant of the Carpet Bag- 
gers, Daniel H. Chamberlain, in 1874?— 


“VIII. We hold that all franchises granted by the State 
should be subservient to the public good; that charges for 
travel and freight should be equitable and uniform and no 
unjust discrimination be made between through and local 
travel.’’350 


Both conventions had to subscribe to that; but if 
it represented the views of Daniel H. Chamberlain, 


9Charleston Evening Post, Aprilsal T9095 
=0News and Courier, October 5, 1874. 


276 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the Reformers under Thomas and others must be 
credited with some influence in turning him from his 
earlier views on railroads, when he was the legal 
guardian of the State. 

Observe him, fresh from the East. 


“Office of the Attorney General, 

Columbia, S. C. January 5, 1870. 

My dear Kimpton: Parker arrived last evening and spoke 
of the G. & C. matter, etc. I told him I had just written you 
fully on that matter and also about the old Bk. bills. Do 
you understand fully the plan of the G. & C. enterprise? Ht 
is proposed to buy $350,000 worth of the G. & C. Stock. This 
with $433,000 of stock held by the State, will give entire con- 
trol to us. The Laurens branch will be sold in February by 
decree of court and will cost not more than $50,000 and 
probably not more than $40,000. The Spartanburg and 
Union can also be got without difficulty. We shall then have 
in G. & C. 168 miles, in Laurens, 31, and in S. & U. 70 miles 
—in all 269 miles— equipped and running—put a first mort- 
gage of $20,000 a mile—sell the bonds at $85 or $90, and the 
balance, after paying all outlays for cost and repairs, is 
immense, over $2,000,000. There is a mint of money in this 
or I am a fool. Then we will soon compel the S. C. R. R. to 
fall into our hands and complete the connection to Asheville, 
N.C. There is an infinite verge of expansion of power be- 
fore us. Write me fully and tell me every thing you want 
done. My last letter was very full. Harrison shall be at- 
tended to at once. I don’t think Neagle will make any 
trouble. Parker hates Neagle, and magnifies his intentions. 

Yours truly, 
D. H. Chamberlain’’351 


What a terrible indictment of the Negro intel- 
ligentsia is their utter neglect of William Hannibal 
Thomas, the great Negro who could think of some- 
thing more than himself and his race, who wished to 
serve humanity at large. 


%1Allen, Gov. Chamberlain’s Administration, p. 143. 


277 


CHAPTER XIV 


With the year 1914, the world entered a new era 
of thought, for the effect upon civilization of that 
great convulsion which afflicted the world in 1914 
was felt far beyond the arenas upon which the 
World War was fought. The conflict was on too 
gigantic a scale for it to be grasped during its wag- 
ing. It tested civilization to a supreme degree. 
Loosely knit bonds, that in all reason should have 
parted under the immense strain to which they were 
submitted, held all the tighter under the tugs to 
which they were subjected. That portion of hu- 
manity which had least to give, gave with a fullness 
beyond the imagination of man. Nothing in all 
time has ever equalled the volunteer movement of 
the men of Britain and her dominion states. Con- 
scription might have produced a more efficient army 
and less weakened the State; but the great soldier 
and greater man, who in the main fashioned the 
armies of Britain to the admiration of his country’s 
foes, knew that, in that great hour, nothing could 
equal the moral effect of that wonderful volunteer 
movement. Democracy was put to the test and 
rang absolutely true. 

So much happened before the United States flung 
her immense force into the scale, that an infinitude 
of fact has passed from the memory of men. Never 
in the history of the world was it more thoroughly 
demonstrated, that “Order is (not) heaven’s first 
law.” Democracy moved up to the sacrifice un- 
falteringly. Autocracy broke under the strain and, 
in his own appointed time and in spite of all that 


278 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


man proposed, God disposed of the event, in a way 
no one could have dreamed of. But before the 
great Republic of the West intervened, in many 
ways the United States was affected, and in none 
more profoundly than by the migration of the Ne- 
groes from the South and their diffusion throughout 
the country. The war between the States and eman- 
cipation had made this diffusion only a question of 
time and it had been progressing with a quickened 
and then a retarded flow, during the decades pre- 
vious to the Great War; but the war’s great check 
on immigration from Europe speeded up the move- 
ment. Lecturing at the University of Chicago in 
June, 1916, the author of this study was struck with 
the nature of the reception accorded the subject: 
“The Readjustment of the Negro to the Social Sys- 
tem of the Sixties,” in which the necessity for dif- 
fusion was stressed. 

Active from 1890 to 1900, later, the standard of 
living of the Northern Negro had risen, and just as 
capital in the North and West had forced out the 
English, German and Irish workmen and replaced 
them with cheaper and inferior people; so too, the 
Northern Negro could not live as cheaply as the 
Slav, Greek, Italian and Slovene.?*? These in their 
turn, however, the World War had been sweeping 
away, since the middle of 1914; and, while the senti- 
mental regard for the Negro’s advancement, which 
had been very broad and active a generation earlier, 
had gradually become restricted to assisting in fit- 
ting him for a residence in “his natural home, the 
mitosis STmmigrant Invasion, p. 174. 


279 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


South,” the need for the brawn and sinew which 
he could supply, being felt in the North and West, 
in obedience to its demand, the Negro, for a con- 
sideration, was moving out of “his natural home”; | 
for the philanthropy of the North, the greatest in 
the world, as it draws its supplies from, is to some 
degree, subservient to, the commercialism of its 
section. 


Almost contemporaneously with the lectures in 
the great Western city, which is destined to be the 
center of Northern Negro opinion, from the metrop- 
olis of the Union came an utterance of immense 
importance from the most aggressive, intelligent 
and humane publication, spreading out its influence 
from the center of American and world finance. 


As viewed by The New Republic, the situation in 
the summer of 1916 was thus stated: 


“To the Northern Negro the war in Europe has been of 
immense and unexpected advantage. It has shut out the 
immigrant who is the Negro’s most dangerous competitor, 
has doubled the demand for the Negro’s labor, raised his 
wages, and given chances to him, which in the ordinary 
course would have gone to white men. If immigration still 
lags after the war or is held down by law, the Negro will 
secure the great opportunity for which he has been waiting 
these fifty years .. . In Southern cities, Atlanta, Memphis, 
Birmingham, Richmond, Nashville, Savannah, Charleston, 
Mobile, Negroes constitute one-third to one-half the popula- 
tion and more than that proportion of the wage earners and 
are given a chance to earn their living, because, without 
them, the work of these cities could not be done. In the 
city of Philadelphia, on the other hand, Negroes form only 
5% per cent of the population, in Chicago only 2 per cent, 
in New York a little less than 2 per cent. ...If white 
men will not work with them, if the employer is forced to 


280 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


choose between a large supply of white labor and a small 
supply of Negro labor, he will choose the former. . .. The 
Negro gets a chance to work only when there is no one else. 
... The wronged are always wrong and so we blame the 
Negro. If we are fair, however, we must place the respon- 
sibility of a social effect for those responsible for the cause. 
If the Northern Negroes have a higher death rate and 
breed a larger proportion of criminals and prostitutes than 
do the whites, it is in large part our own fault. We cannot 
understand the problems of the Negro in the North unless 
we constantly bear in mind the fact of industrial opportunity. 
The Northern Negro has the right to vote, the right and 
duty to send his children to school, and technically, at least, 
many civil and political rights. We do not put him into 
Jim Crow cars or hold him in prison camps for private 
exploitation. Nevertheless, the pressure upon him is almost 
as painful, though not nearly so brutal or debasing, as that 
upon the Southern Negro. The Northern Negro is urged 


to rise but held down hard. .. Immigration after the war 
seems likely to be kept down at a low level during several 
years or possibly decades. ... It is the Negro’s chance, the 


first extensive widening of his industrial field since emanci- 
pation.”’353 


The fact that this very able statement is not en- 
tirely exact in all its details takes very little from 
the value of the presentation of it. As has been dis- 
closed by Mr. Warne, in his, “Immigrant Invasion,” 
the Negro had quite a chance until the decade 1900- 
1910. That he did not improve it as fully as he 
might have done was due; first, to his ignorance; 
second, to his retention for quite a while of servile 
instincts; third, to the determination, on the part of 
a very considerable and influential portion of the 
Northern and Western public, that the Negro must 
be kept out of the North and West; and of the con- 


*3The New Republic, June 24, 1916. 
281 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


trolling portion of the Southern public, assisted by 
the Republican Supreme Court of the United States, 
that he should be kept, as near to the condition of a 
serf of the soil in the South, as he could be by those 
so restraining him, keeping themselves, meanwhile, 
on the windy side of the law; fourth, to an active, 
continuous, well financed propaganda, led by the 
most influential member of the race, that he should 
cling to the South. 

Against such forces what could be affected by the 
few Southern white men, Carlyle McKinley, Wade 
Hampton, and M. C. Butler, as early as 1889, preach- 
ing “Diffusion” ? 

North and South, in the main for purely selfish 
reasons, the force of the country was against dif- 
fusion of the Negro and for banking him in the 
South, where he had been so long a slave. For such 
a paper, therefore, as The New Republic, to advocate 
diffusion was a matter of the very first importance. 


Continuing the discussion in its issue of July 1, 
1916. The New Republic declared: 


“For the nation as a whole, such a gradual dissemination 
of the Negro among all the States would ultimately be of 
real advantage. If at the end of half a century, only 50 
per cent or 60 per cent instead of 89 per cent of the Negroes 
were congregated in the Southern States, it would end the 
fear of race domination, and take from the South many of 
its peculiar characteristics, which today hamper develop- 
ment. To the Negro it would be of even more obvious bene- 
fit. ... For if the Southern Negro finding political and 
social conditions intolerable, were to migrate to the North, 
he would have in his hand a weapon as effective, as any he 
could find, in the ballot box. . . . Against the opposition of 
the preponderant white population, the Southern Negro has 


282 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


few defenses. He has no vote, he has no wealth; and as 
for the protection of the law, that is a sword held by the 
white man with the edge towards the Negro. He cannot 
better his condition by political action or armed revolt. His 
one defense is to move away.’’54 

Weighing duly what is urged above, without nec- 
essarily accepting all of it as accurate, is it not ap- 
parent, that, for a Southern white man to argue that 
the Negroes should remain in the South, in the 
masses in which they now exist there, is an indica- 
tion that he refuses to consider anything as bene- 
ficial, which affects industrial conditions he has be- 
come accustomed to? For the Negro so to think 
is simply the survival of the servile instinct, which 
the bulk of the Southern whites claim is latent in all 
Negroes. 

To stress the matter a little further, the view of a 
Southern and a Northern Negro will be submitted 
and contrasted. 

The first is the view of a colored man, Rev. 
Richard Carroll, who, in 1890, had attracted the at- 
tention of George William Curtis, as has been be- 
fore mentioned, by his bold and original utterance, 
that Tillman had made the whites as well as the Ne- 
groes readers and thinkers. Some eight years later 
this colored man had served as the chaplain of a 
colored regiment in Cuba. Later he had occupied 
himself with a colored school near Columbia, South 
Carolina, and, to some extent, had become, to the 
press of the State of South Carolina, the type of the 
good Negro, who agrees with the best of the whites. 
That is the distinct ear mark of the-“‘Good Negro.” 


S<Tpbid July 1, 1916. 
283 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Describing the departure of the Negroes from 
South Carolina in 1916, he states that: 


“Hon. H. C. Tillman, son of Senator B. R. Tillman, told me 
that in the crowd were one or two of the farm hands that 
had signed contracts to work next year, but that he would 
not interfere with them.” 


Next he describes the tearful, melodramatic ap- 
peal of a Georgia divine, entreating the Negroes not 
to leave the South: 


“We have not treated you right; we are going to do bet- 
ter. Let us, white and colored unite to solve the race ques- 
tion on Southern soil. We are in debt to you colored peo- 
ple. First of all we owe you the Gospel; then we owe you 
protection before the law. There will be no more outrages 
when we take up this problem, as we should, and solve it by 
the Gospel.” 


Having shown the patriotic unselfishness of Cap- 
tain Tillman and quoted the wail of the Georgia di- 
vine, the colored educator proceeds to state his own 
view: 


“This is the country for the black man; the white people 
of the South should offer the proper inducements and pro- 
tection before the law to keep the colored people in the 
Southland. ...It may be as many of our colored people 
say: ‘God is in this movement.’ But I believe that if the 
colored people of the South had worked together for the last 
fifty years for the good of each race and at the same time 
each race in its place, we would have had better conditions; 
in the South—no lynchings, no cause for lynchings. If the 
best people in the South had kept it in the hands of the Gen. 
Wade Hampton type, this would have been the greatest 
country on earth.” 


Just about fifty years before Carroll’s utterance, 
people in the South, to some degree answering to 
284 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Carroll’s description of the Hampton type, framed 
the Black Codes, as they thought, “‘for the good of 
each race, and at the same time each race in its 
place.” But, after Reconstruction, Wade Hampton 
thought diffusion of the Negro was the only remedy. 


After detailing cases, where he claimed to know 
that Negro men of property had been ordered out of 
the State simply because they owned property and 
were prosperous, Carroll states that when they came 
to him for advice, he advised them to— 

“try to get to some other white men in the county or com- 


munity, as there are plenty of white men in South Carolina, 
who would give justice and protection.’’55 


The Black Codes made this obligatory on all mas- 
ters for their servants. The framers of the codes 
were raised in the school of politics which Rhett, 
in 1850, announced the basic principle of, as follows: 

“Where there is but one race in a community there may 
be political equality in rights—but this cannot give equality 
in mind, character and condition. Servitude still prevails 
in one form or another, from a necessity as stern as the 
laws. But when the races are different and one race is 
inferior to the other, the inferior race must be exterminated 
or fall into such a state of subjection as to present motives 
for their preservation to the stronger race.’”356 


Residence in the South, a considerable time after 
maturity, had therefore apparently lessened the in- 
dependence of this colored man. He had come, not 
unnaturally, to prefer security to independence. 

But, in the same year and about the same time, 
there appeared in the same paper a temperately 


&5VNews and Courier, December 17, 1916. 
Sé¢Rhett’s Oration on Calhoun, Pamphlets Vol. 8 p. 151 Johnston O.LS. 


285 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


worded article from the pen of another Negro, also 
a minister, R. R. Wright, Jr., residing in Philadel- 
phia, who had been employed at various times by 
the United States Bureau of Labor and the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania. 

He had also, at an earlier date, published an essay 
on the Negro Problem, which treats the subject as a 
scientific investigation, in which all temper and feel- 
ing is out of place. With regard to the movement 
of the Negroes he declared there had been at least 
four different migrations of the Negroes from the 
South to the North since the war between the States, 
and estimating in 1916 that there were then, in that 
section, usually called the North but embracing a 
considerable portion of the West, he thought, of the 
1,600,000 Negroes there, three fourths had been 
born in the South. With regard to the number of 
Negroes in the North at that date this estimate was 
above what the Census of 1920 disclosed; for by it, 
the date 1910, there were only 1,059,000 Negroes in 
the North and West and therefore, even if they had 
increased by 1916 to 1,600,000, three fourths of these 
could not have been from the South, even if the 
total addition of 541,000 had come from that sec- 
tion, as of the 1,059,000 in 1910, only forty per cent 
were from the South;**? but whether 40%, 50% or 
75% were from the South, Wright believed 80% 
of those who had moved up would stay, because he 
was confident, the most efficient could compete with 
the Slavs and Italians in rough work. Indeed he 
claimed it was no uncommon thing to see a Negro 
 ®Bureau U. 8. Census 1910 Bulletin 129, p. 64, 


286 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


foreman over groups of Italians in Pennsylvania. 
Having seen the same thing practically as to Ne-. 
groes and Spaniards, during the World War the 
writer can believe this. Higher wages and better 
educational facilities also Wright claimed would 
draw the Negro, North and West, and finally he cited 
what is in his opinion the most powerful inducement, 
for the Negro to move in increasing numbers from 
the South to the North: 


“The opportunity to vote will also tend to hold them. 
Politicians are encouraging Negroes to remain; as they 
are very generally Republican. Northern Negroes are en- 
couraging them to stay because it gives them more power; 
and after the Negro casts his vote and takes part in po- 
litical meetings, he is just like the naturalized foreigner— 
he likes it and stays. Of course the white people rule, be- 
cause superior intelligence and wealth always rule. But the 
black man enjoys being a part of the Government and being 
called upon every year to have his “say”. .. While there 
is no more social equality in the North than there is in the 
South, and practically no desire for the same, the longer 
the Negro lives there, the opportunities to enjoy himself 
according to his means appeal to him. He earns more 
money, can live in a better house, buy better clothes, develops 
more accomplishments, has more leisure and has more pro- 
tection in his enjoyment. Personally, I think it is good 
both for the Negroes and for the whites that a million or 
two million Negroes leave the South. It will make room fora 
large number of foreigners to come to the South and will 
tend to divorce the South’s labor problem more widely from 
its race problem, and will give it a new perspective. It will 
also rob the South of the fear of ‘Negro domination’ and 
will give it a chance to give a better expression to our 
democratic principles. On the other hand the scattering 
the Negroes throughout the country will bring them in touch 
with the forces of organized labor in a way to bring them 


287 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


better protection, while it will also acquaint the North with 
the Negro in such a way as to give it a more intelligent 
grasp of our general problem of racial relations.’’358 


Meanwhile with views for and views against, 
shouted to them, from all sides, the Negroes moved 
up from the South to the North and West and to 
the great centers of industry, to supply the place of 
immigrants and soldiers passed and passing to Eu- 
rope for the great war. 


To the reading Negro, wherever he was, North or 
South in this year just before the entrance of the 
great Republic into the greatest war of all time, came 
“The New Negro, His Political and Civil Status and 
Related Essays,” by William Pickens, Lit. D. Easily 
comprehended, popularly composed, they opened 
with the usual attack upon the black laws of the 
South in the sixties, the author especially singling 
out the code of South Carolina for criticism. Of 
them generally he says: 


“From the standpoint of the Negro’s interests, however, 
these laws were ‘black’, not only in name and aim, but in 
their very nature. Instead of being the property of a per- 
sonally interested master, the Negro was to be converted 
into the slave of a much less sympathetic society in gen- 
eral,’”’359 


But strange to say this critic, in 1916, actually 
proclaims that— 


“One of the greatest handicaps under which the New 
Negro lives is the handicap of the lack of acquaintanceship 
between him and his white neighbor. Under the former 
order, when practically all Negroes were either slaves or 


s8R, R. Wright Jr. Letter News and Courier, November 6, 1916. 
2Pickens, The New Negro, p. 18. 


288 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


servants, every Negro had the acquaintance of some white 
man; as a race he was better known, better understood and 
was, therefore, the object of less suspicion on the part of the 
white community.’ 


If this was a handicap in 1916, what must it have 
been in 1865? Forty one years before this Negro 
scholar discovered the handicap, the South, in at- 
tempting to readjust itself to the consequences of 
defeat and the overthrow of its industrial system, 
had legislated to preserve that acquaintanceship by 
a system of apprenticeship, which if it was calculated 
to work out the problem very slowly; yet was cal- 
culated to produce something superior even to the 
free persons of color that slavery had evolved, a 
worthy product which no Negro or Northern scholar 
has ever had the patience to think about. Little as 
the author of this study knows about the free per- 
sons of color whom the South reared; yet it is not 
fair to accuse them of what Pickens is absolutely 
justified in stating with regard to the mass of South- 
ern colored citizens who were the product of Con- 
gressional Reconstruction. Pickens indeed is re- 
freshingly frank in this respect and so much so that 
the Negroes will avoid his book. It will not be found 
advertised in any list of the National Association for 
the Advancement of the Colored Race. He is dan- 
gerously near William Hannibal Thomas in the fol- 
lowing: 

“Till this day the Negro is seldom frank to the white man 
in America. He says what he does not mean; he means 


what he does not say. I have heard Negro speakers address 
mixed audiences of white and colored persons and both white 


Ibid. p. 228. 
289 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


and black go away rejoicing, each side thinking that the 
speaker had spoken their opinions, altho the opinions of 
the blacks were very different from those of the whites, 
even contradictory. This is one reason for the great mis- 
conception in the white race respecting the desires, ambi- 
tions and sentiments of the black.’’361 


But in the year which followed that in which 
Pickens’s book was published the United States en- 
tered the World War. 


Before discussing the effect of that great adven- 
ture upon the Negro minority of one-tenth of the 
population of the United States, the force which 
swung the whole should have some slight considera- 
tion, and from the pen of a political opponent, the 
editor of the greatest Republican paper of the West 
this is pictured as follows: 


“Our chief admiration for Mr. Wilson is for the manner 
in which he drove the war activities once we were commit- 
ted. That determination was evolved from his character. 
He used conscription. He furnished the Allies with what 
they needed—men, money and materials in the amounts 
needed. Weakness at this time might have ruined us. A 
man less determined to have his own way, less impervious 
to what was said of him, might have flinched at conscripting 
soldiers. He might have tried to fight the war with volun- 
teers. He might even have tried to fight it with money and 
materials. He might have tried to spare the nation human 
sacrifices or to limit the expenditure of human life. Then 
we should have entered a losing war and have been among 
the losers, just in time to be in the wreckage. Conscription 
was his big decision and whether he realized it or not was his 
most dangerous one. Hughes might have had serious draft 
riots. From Wilson the people took the draft with hardly 
a murmur, and the war was won right then. . The President 
did not allow the people to draw back from a drop in the 


Ibid. p. 37. 
290 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


cup. He took their money. He spent it without a thought 
for the waste of it. There had to be waste. He put the 
United States behind the Allies with a promise of the last 
man and the last dollar. It required courage, intelligence 
and character; and all the ruggedness and wilfulness of Mr. 
Wilson’s temperament served the country as it needed to 
be served. Those were the high moments of his career. 
He sent 2,000,000 men to France before the astonished Ger- 
mans thought that it was possible to do so. He had 2,000,000 
in America training camps and more were being drafted. 
Then also from the White House came the thunders of 
rhetoric which stupefied the German people behind their 
armies and disintegrated them in the rear of their fighting 
forces. As American divisions put the pressure on Ger- 
man divisions, Mr. Wilson’s words destroyed the morale of 
the German people who had been steadfast; and the war 
was won.’’362 


But he did more, a Southerner, conscious of the 
deep prejudices of his own section and against the 
protests of many State officials, he determined that 
a certain proportion of colored men should have 
training as officers; nor did he permit this military 
training to be stopped even after the Houston riot, 
when for the second time Negro soldiery shot up a 
Southern city. Those who were guilty were court 
martialed promptly ; but to the surprise of not a few 
of the Negro aspirants for office, the training of 
Negro officers proceeded. Again not quoting from 
a friend; but taking a Negro’s statement we note: 


“As many as 1200 men became commissioned officers... 
Negro nurses were authorized by the War Department for 
service in base hospitals at six army camps—Funston, Sher- 
man, Zachary Taylor and Dodge, and women served as can- 
teen workers in France and in charge of hostess houses in 


82C0hicago Tribune. 


291 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


the United States. Sixty Negro men served as chaplains, 
350 as Y. M. C. A. secretaries and others in special capaci- 
ties . . . In the whole matter of the War the depressing in- 
cident was the Court Martial of sixty-three members of the 
Twenty Fourth Infantry, U. S. A. on trial for rioting and 
the murder of seventeen people at Houston Texas, August 
23rd, 1917. As a result of it thirteen of the defendants 
were hanged, December 11th, forty-nine sentences to im- 
prisonment for life, four for imprisonment for shorter terms 
and four were acquitted.’’36 


President Wilson’s action in this matter was a 
vindication of President Roosevelt’s action in the 
previous riot at Brownsville and a stern condemna- 
tion of the sentimentalists, white and black whose 
strictures upon Roosevelt had led the Negro soldiery 
to harbor the amazing idea, that troops of any color 
could take the law into their own hands and make 
Zaberns in America, on a scale beyond the wildest 
imaginations of any War Lord’s minions, in Europe. 


Brawley, Short History of American Negro, p. 357. 


292 


CHAPTER XV 


In the year immediately following the end of the 
great World War armed clashes between whites and 
Negroes in the United States occurred in the great 
cities of the North and West, Washington, Chicago 
and Omaha and also in the State of Arkansas. 
These race riots drew comment from whites and 
Negroes. Prior to these riots in the time of peace, 
there had been others during the World War at 
Chester and Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsyl- 
vania and one in Illinois at East St. Louis. Both 
Dr. DuBois, the president of ‘“The National Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of the Colored People,” 
and the colored minister Wright, whose article on 
Negro migration has been alluded to, gave advice. 
It is interesting to compare their utterances. The 
communication of the minister is first cited. 


“To my dear Brethren and Friends: 

Permit me to say this word to you in this time of most 
serious anxiety. You have read of the riots in St. Louis, 
Philadelphia, and Chester, Pennsylvania during the Great 
World War and in Washington and Chicago since the close. 
When the facts have been finally sifted, they have always 
shown that the colored people did not start these riots. They 
were started by whites in every instance. If there are to 
be riots in the future I want to say to my people let it be 
as it has been in the past, that you shall not be the instiga- 
tors of them. It is to the everlasting disgrace of these 
Northern cities as it has been of certain Southern cities, 
that these riots have been started by whites, and that white 
policemen who should be the first to uphold the law have, in 
nearly every instance assisted the mobs. Now is the time 
for all of us to keep our wits: to do nothing wrong, which 
may be any excuse for riot. Let men and women go about 


293 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


their work quietly, attending to their business. Keep away 
from saloons and places where there is gambling. More 
trouble starts in these places than anywhere else. Avoid 
arguments. Make no boasts. Make no threats. Attack no 
man nor woman without due provocation, and under no cir- 
cumstances hurt a child. Don’t tell anybody what the Ne- 
groes are going to do to the whites. For we do not want 
war; we want peace. Our safety is in peace. Don’t loaf in 
the streets; do not needlessly encounter gangs of white boys. 
A gang of boys from 15 to 20 years is generally irresponsible. 
A gang of white toughs will delight to ‘jump’ a lone Negro, 
especially if they number eight or a dozen and believe the 
Negro is unarmed; and it is foolish to give them the chance. 
In trading as nearly as possible get the right change before 
paying your bill; know what you want, where you can trade 
with your own people, where you are not liable to get into 
a dispute. Don’t go to white theatres, white ice cream 
places, white banks or white stores, where you can find 
colored to serve you just as well. In other words don’t 
spend your hard earned money where you are in danger of 
being beaten up. Don’t carry concealed weapons—its against 
the law. Now Iam not urging cowardice. I am urging com- 
mon sense. I am urging law and order. Protect your home, 
protect your wife and children, with your life, if necessary. 
If a man crosses your threshold after you or your family, the 
law allows you to protect your home even if you have to 
kill the intruder. Obey the law but do not go hunting for 
trouble. Avoid it. Do not be afraid or lose heart because 
of these riots. They are merely symptoms of the protest 
of your entrance into a higher sphere of American citizen- 
ship. They are the dark hours before morning which have 
always come just before the burst of a new civic light. 
Some people see this light and they provoke these riots en- 
deavoring to stop it from coming. But God is working. 
Things will be better for the Negro. We want full citizen- 
ship ballot, equal school facilities and everything else. We 
fought for them. We will have them; we must not yield. 
The greater part of the best thinking white people, North 
and South know we are entitled to all we ask. They know 


294 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


we will get it. In their hearts they are for us though they 
may fear the lower elements who are trying to stir up 
trouble to keep us from getting our rights. But they will 
fail just as they failed to keep us from our freedom. God 
is with us. They cannot defeat God. So I say to you stand 
aside, stand prepared, provoke no riot; just let God do 
his work. He may permit a few riots just to force the 
Negroes closer together. He lets the hoodlums kill a few 
in order to teach the many that WE MUST GET TO- 
GETHER. But he does not mean that we shall be de- 
feated—if we trust him. Let us learn the lesson He is 
teaching us. Remember a riot may break out in any place. 
Let pastors caution peace, prayer and preparedness. Let us 
provoke no trouble. Let us urge our congregations to keep 
level heads and do nothing that is unlawful. 


Yours in Christian bonds, 


erry Piet.) sf. 
Editor of the Christian Recorder.’’®4 


The appeal of DuBois is more dramatic: 


“Brothers we are on the Great Deep. We have cast off on 
the vast voyage which will lead to Freedom or Death. For 
three centuries we have suffered and cowered. No race ever 
gave Passive Resistance and Submission to Evil longer, more 
piteous trial. Today we raise the terrible weapon of Self 
Defense. When the murderer comes he shall no longer 
strike us in the back. When the armed lynchers gather, 
we too must gather armed. When the mob moves we pro- 
pose to meet it with bricks and clubs and guns. But we 
must tread here with solemn caution. We must never let 
justifiable self defense against individuals become blind and 
lawless offense against all white folk. We must not seek 
reform by violence. We must not seek vengeance. Ven- 
geance is Mine saith the Lord; or to put it otherwise—only 
infinite Justice and Knowledge can assign blame in this 
poor world and we ourselves are sinful men, struggling des- 
perately with our own crime and ignorance. We must de- 


$44Kerlin, The Voice of the Negro, p. 21. 
295 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


fend ourselves, our homes, our wives and children against 
the lawless without stint or hesitation; but we must care- 
fully and scrupulously avoid on our own part bitter and un- 
justifiable aggression against anybody. The line is dif- 
ficult to draw. In the South the Police and Public Opinion 
back the mob and the least resistance on the part of the 
innocent black victim is nearly always construed as a law- 
less attack on society and government. In the North the 
Police and the Public will dodge and falter, but in the end 
they will back the Right when the truth is made clear to 
them. But whether the line between just resistance and 
angry retaliation is hard or easy, we must draw it carefully, 
not in wild resentment, but in grim and sober consideration; 
and when back of the impregnable fortress of the Divine 
Right of Self Defense, which is sanctioned by every law of 
God and man, in every land, civilized or uncivilized, we must 
take our unfaltering stand. Honor, endless and undying 
Honor, to every man, black or white, who in Houston, East 
St. Louis, Washington and Chicago gave his life for Civiliza- 
tion and Order. If the United States is to be a Land of 
Law, we would live humbly and peaceably in it—working, 
singing, learning and dreaming to make it and ourselves 
nobler and better; if it is to be a Land of Mobs and Lynchers, 
we might as well die today as tomorrow. 


‘And how can a man die better 
Than facing fearful odds 
For the ashes of his fathers 
And the temples of his Gods?’ 
The Crisis (New York) September.’’#5 


In a consideration of these two utterances, if it 
be conceded that in point of literary excellence, Du- 
Bois’s appeal is superior, yet that does not establish 
that in his call he better plays the part of leader 
than the Negro minister, first quoted, whose ex- 
hortation to his race, unlike that of DuBois, is in no 
" 88Tbid. p. 20. 

296 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


way overstrained, nor pitched too high for the 
humblest, if possessed of rudimentary intelligence, 
to grasp. The detailed instructions in Wright’s 
publication, simple as they are, contain wisdom, the 
wisdom which crieth out in the streets from of 
old; while if the comparison instituted, by DuBois 
between the Northern and the Southern whites, in 
respect to the police and public opinion in the two 
sections, is true, it is passing strange, that unlike 
the Negro minister, he is not found advising the 
migration from the worse to the better section, as 
far as the needs of his race are concerned. If in 
the North, even if justice moves limpingly as he 
describes; yet according to him justice does move. 
And for the poor and oppressed what gain can out- 
weigh justice? But there is a graver comparison to 
be instituted between these calls. DuBois in his 
publication exclaims: 


“Honor, endless and undying Honor, to every man, black 
or white who in Houston, East St. Louis, Washington and 
Chicago gave his life for Civilization and Order.” 


Now whatever wrongs or supposed wrongs the 
Negro soldiery suffered in Houston, can it be rea- 
sonably contended that they, armed by the Federal 
Government and enlisting to be under its orders, 
in breaking away from the control of their superior 
officers and with weapons put in their hands for 
other purposes, in any way assisted civilization and 
order by precipitating themselves upon the white 
population in an attempt to shoot up the city? If 
he does so claim then he is worse than the Negro 
soldiery who so acted, or those Negroes and whites, 


297 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


no matter who they were, who criticised Roosevelt’s 
action in the Brownsville matter. No matter to what 
lofty station Roosevelt’s critics may have been ad- 
vanced; no matter what service they may claim 
to have rendered peace and civilization, their weak- 
ness in that first instance induced the graver breach, 
for which, under President Wilson, as commander- 
in-chief, the Negro soldiery were courtmartialed 
and punished for their excesses at Houston. Yet 
while the perusal of DuBois’s call, as above, does 
not convey a positive stand for or against the Ne- 
gro soldiery and is open to the criticism which ap- 
pears in Pickens’s book: 


“Till this day the Negro is seldom frank to the white man. 
He says what he does not mean; he means what he does not 
say,’— 


apparently his view changed. As editor of The 
Crisis, Dr. DuBois upon the occasion of the Chicago 
riots as above noted honored every man, black or 
white, who, in either Houston or Chicago, gave his 
life for civilization and order; later he expressed 
the following, which is nothing more nor less than a 
justification of the behavior of the Negro soldiery 
at Houston: 


“Six years ago December 11, at 7:17 in the morning, 
thirteen American Negro soldiers were murdered on the 
scaffold by the American government to satisfy the blood- 
lust of Texas, on account of the Houston riot.’’366 


Now, how does this exhibit this extremely gifted 
man, as a leader of his race? In the roar and 
blaze of the Chicago riot, in 1919 he was for “Honor, 
" 86The’ Crisis, December 19238, p. 59. 

298 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


endless and undying Honor to every man black or 
white in Houston ... who gave his life for civili- 
zation and order’’; but by the end of 1920, the ex- 
ecuted Negro soldiers had become martyrs, mur- 
dered by the government. 

But in justice to this most excitable man, it must 
be admitted that there can be found whites of culti- 
vation and intellect just as wild. Take the case of 
Dr. H. J. Seligman. 


With all the insufferable conceit of a certain class 
of white, he appropriates the work of Negroes, 
(easily recognized by those who have heard their 
most intelligent speakers), denatures it of the hu- 
mor which makes its appeal and presents it to the 
public, as his own indictment of the South. “The 
Southern dogma colors the rest of the country,” he 
says. Yet he admits—‘“In so far as the South is 
concerned, conditions improve as the Negro moves 
out.” Another writer, Stephen Graham, starts his 
book with crediting to the Negro slaves emancipated 
in 1863 the “twelve millions out of a total of a 
hundred millions of all races blending in America.’’** 
As the census postdating his book gives only 10,- 
389,328 Negroes for 1920, and as in all reason 
nearly two millions of these may be argued to be 
the progeny of the free persons of color of 1860, 
the contribution to the race from the class of colored 
person invariably ignored by English and Northern 
writers must approach almost a third. But that is 
not sensational. So journeying through Virginia, 
Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana 

387Graham, Children of the Slaves, Preface. 


299 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


and Mississippi, visiting Negroes, accepting their 
hospitality and practicing social equality, Graham 
most inconsiderately denounces their smell and, be- 
cause he failed to reach and establish any spiritual 
touch, in his attempt to address them, stupidly de- 
cides there was none to be attained. Expressing 
the belief that the Negroes of New York and Chicago 
were firmer in flesh and will than those in the 
South and yield more hope for the race in the 
light of the extra prosperity and happiness of the 
Northern Negroes, he nevertheless crawls back to 
the feet of Northern prejudice with the declaration 
against the migration of the Negroes from the South 
to the North and the consequent even distribution 
over the whole of the country, because it would 
take “hundreds of years to even them out” and 
“they would probably crowd more and more into the 
large cities and be as much involved in evil con- 
ditions, as they were in the South.” Can it be pos- 
sible that there are nothing but evil conditions in 
the great cities of the North and West? Is it not 
the belief of the Northern authorities, that what 
the Negro needs is education? What education is 
equal to residence in these great pulses of our civi- 
lization? Has not Mr. Graham, himself attested 
“the extra prosperity and happiness of the North- 
ern Negroes?” Why then attempt to throw doubts 
on the benefits to the Negro from diffusion? It 
might as well be faced without any more squirming. 
It is inevitable. By the law of compensation, that 
section of our great country, which for a hundred 
years or more has represented to the admiring 


300 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


world all the virtue, intelligence and civilization of 
the United States, especially in its treatment of the 
colored race will have to endeavor to live up to its 
reputation. The aspiring Negro is not going to be 
denied that contact with the most advanced civiliza- 
tion of this country, which those who freed him 
owe to him. If he crowds into the great cities, it is 
_ because there he finds its most advertised display, 
and so the most active and energetic push into it 
with some contempt for their feeble self elected lead- 
ers, who have preached against or kept quiet con- 
cerning it. 

For three decades prior to the war between the 
States, the Southern States of the Union had made 
railroad development secondary to the Negro ques- 
tion. Constituting as they did in area at that time 
fully one-half of the States; peopled with 3,575,634 
whites and 2,176,127 Negroes, they had been led to 
base their civilization on the substratum of an in- 
ferior race, putting that wild conception even above 
the Federal Union, that great experiment in govern- 
ment, which they had been most instrumental in 
framing. After their overthrow, Reconstruction 
raised the spectre of the Negro outstripping the 
whites in the South and almost assuredly in the 
lower South. And what establishes the wonderful 
clearness of the vision of the Negro, William Han- 
nibal Thomas, was his ability, two years before the 
overthrow of Reconstruction, to see through the 
mists of 1874, which so completely shrouded the 
vision of Judge Albion Tourgee as late as 1888 in 
his ‘Appeal to Caesar.” 


301 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


For Thomas realized, from the outset, that the 
Negro majority of South Carolina could not last. 

In the hundred years which have elapsed since 
1820, the proportion of the Negro population to the 
whites in the United States, as a whole, has dropped 
from 19 per cent to 9.9 per cent, the whites rising 
from 81 per cent to 90.1 per cent. With regard to 
the Negro population in the Southern States as com- 
pared with the rest of the United States, the propor- 
tion in the South has dropped from 92.5 per cent to 
84.2 per cent, the percentage of the rest of the 
United States rising from 8 per cent to 15.98 per 
cent. But while it is treated as a movement of 
one hundred years, as far as the South is concerned, 
on account of the unknown accretions prior to 1860 
through the illicit slave trade and the magnetic at- 
traction of Reconstruction, it could be more ac- 
curately represented as a movement of forty years. 


In the five great States of Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, embracing an 
area of about 224,960 square miles of contiguous 
territory, the white population had risen from 4,- 
112,564 in 1880, to 7,444,218 in 1920; while in the 
same period the Negro population had increased 
from 2,408,654 only to 3,223,791. But what is even 
more striking is the fact that in the last decade there 
has been an actual decrease of 148,288 in the Ne- 
gro population of this Southern area. 

At the same time in the five great States of Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin the Ne- 
gro population has risen to 514,589, and to the East 
of the great Northwest, in the Middle States and 


302 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


New England 709,453 were found to be; while West 
of the Mississippi river, outside of the old South, in- 
to a region, which before the war between the States 
was prairie and almost unexplored mountain and 
desert, 314,879 Negroes have moved. Yet in the 
South they still constitute 26 per cent of the popula- 
tion to only 3 per cent outside, in the rest of the 
Union. 

Mr. Graham’s impression, however, that it will 
“take hundreds of years to even them out” is a 
hasty and illconsidered judgment. Louisiana, which 
forty years ago had a colored majority of 28,707, 
had by the Census of 1920 a white majority of 396,- 
360. Georgia had increased its white majority 
from 90,773 in 1880 to 482,749 in 1920; while the 
great cotton planting State of Alabama had raised 
its majority in the same period from 62,083 to 546,- 
972. Considering what the Census figures show 
for Virginia, suffering as no State suffered from the 
war between the States, engaged in by her for no 
purpose of sustaining a black substratum for her 
civilization; but for a purpose identical with that 
which the civilized world acclaimed for Belgium 
and supporting the shock of war with a courage and 
devotion not surpassed by France in the Great War, 
she was shorn of about a third of her area and four- 
tenths of her white population, in utter defiance of 
the Constitution; but, now with a white majority 
which has risen from 57.5 per cent to 70.1 per cent, 
she is in a healthier condition than the portion which 
was carved out of her flank. The gain of North 
Carolina is even greater. Taking the whole South, 


303 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


we find, that from 1880 to 1920 the white popula- 
tion has increased from 12,309,087 to 25,016,579; 
while during the same period the colored has only 
risen from 6,013,215 to 8,801,753. It is true that 
by the Census of 1920 two Southern States, Missis- 
sippi and South Carolina still each had a colored 
majority; but one which had shrunk from 213,227 
to only 46,181 in South Carolina and from 170,893 
in Mississippi to 81,262; the percentage of whites 
in South Carolina being 48.6 per cent and in Mis- 
Sissippi 48.38 per cent.*® 

Until the Census of 1930 is published we shall 
not know positively; but in this, the fifth year 
since the last census, all available information seems 
to indicate that in both States the white minority 
has been converted into a white majority. By the 
census of the United States for 1920 in the 875,670 
square miles which constitute the Southern States 
there were 25,016,579 whites and 8,801,753 colored 
inhabitants; while the remaining 2,150,600 square 
miles of the Union held 70,925,032 whites and 1,- 
552,402 Negroes, with 109,966 under strictly Fed- 
eral control at Washington. But again, North of 
the Northern line of the United States extends a 
region greater in area than the United States in 
which as indicated by the Canadian census of 1921 
there are only 8,750,643 inhabitants. The door of 
opportunity therefore still remains open to the Ne- 
gro in America and his inability to see this, through- 
out the fifty eight years of his freedom in which it 
has been accessible to him by foot, while handicapped 
Tuseesry V8 EGenans Pop. by Color, 1920. 

304 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


by their ignorance of our wants, our customs and 
our language, the impoverished whites of Europe 
have crossed the three thousand miles of water which 
barred them, offers the most striking proof of the 
Negro’s lack of capacity to help himself. 


Perhaps, in justice to the Negroes as a whole, it 
should be noted that in no race that has ever ex- 
isted has it been easier to use the supposed leaders 
against the true interests of the masses, than is 
apparent in the history of the Negroes. Yet even 
these, as they now clash with each other, emit some 
sparks of political intelligence. Meanwhile the mass 
are growing more accustomed to judge for them- 
selves. Northern environment has not been with- 
out its effect upon them. They are taking something 
from it and they are going to give something to it. 


In the Northwest, in all probability, they are in 
the next decade apt to gather in such numbers, as 
to affect both the South and Canada, although in 
exactly opposite ways. To a considerable extent 
what The New Republic foresaw in 1916 is coming 
to pass; but in somewhat quicker movement than 
that paper anticipated. The last great effort to 
induce them to remain in the South their “natural 
home” has been made. It has utterly failed. They 
are steadily moving out and diffusion is proceeding 
without any of the ills so continuously alleged as in- 
separable with such a movement. 


And now to this last effort, the comments upon it 
and what may be called the first Negro Crusade, 


305 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


we should pay some attention, and then close with 
an allusion to the most helpful discussion ever in- 
stituted concerning the Negro. 


306 


CHAPTER XVI 


At Birmingham, Alabama, President Harding 
spoke on the Negro question, October 25, 1921. 
Elected president by the greatest majority which 
had ever placed a president in power, his remarks, 
if not very profoundly wise, were unquestionably 
bravely frank. His position was that unless there 
should “be recognition of the absolute divergence in 
things social and racial,” there might be ‘‘occasion 
for great and permanent differentiation.” To quote 
him in such passages as most clearly and unequivo- 
cally expressed his views, he will be found to have 
said: 

Men of different races may well stand uncompromisingly 
against any suggestion of social equality. Indeed it would 
be helpful to have the word equality eliminated from this 
consideration, to have it accepted on both sides that this is 
not a question of social equality but a question of recogniz- 
ing a fundamental, eternal and inescapable difference. We 
shall have made real progress when we develop an attitude 


in the public and community thought of both races which 
recognizes the difference.?®9 


To this he added, as if replying to some unex- 
pressed utterance, altho’ he was the sole speaker: 


I would accept that a black man cannot be a white man 
and that he does not need and should not aspire to be as 
much like a white man as possible in order to accomplish 
the best that is possible for him.370 


In these two utterances President Harding put 
himself in accord with Abraham Lincoln and in op- 
position to Theodore Roosevelt’s dinner to Booker 


Pech pean Speech at Birmingham, News and Oourier, Oct. 27, 1921. 
1d. 


307 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Washington, and, from this, he drew near to what 
is supposed to be the teaching of Booker Washing- 
ton: 

I would say let the black man vote when he is fit to vote. 
... 1 have no sympathy with the half baked altruism that 
would overstock us with doctors and lawyers of whatever 
color and leave us in need of people fit and willing to do the 
manual work of a work-a-day world.?71 


From these generalizations, after quoting from 
F. D. Lugard a paragraph which even a Philadelphia 
lawyer would be puzzled to unravel, in which it is 
declared that while there shall be equality in the 
paths of knowledge and culture and equal admira- 
tion and opportunity, yet each must pursue his own 
inherited traditions, and while agreeing to be spiri- 
tually equal diverge physically and materially, the 
President reached the piece-de-resistance of his dis- 
course: 

“It is probable that as a nation we have come to the end 
of the period of very rapid increase in our population. Re- 
stricted immigration will reduce the rate of increase and 
force us back upon our older population to find people to do 
the simpler physically harder manual tasks. This will re- 
quire some difficult adjustments. In anticipation of such a 
condition the South may well recognize that the North and 
West are likely to continue their drains upon its colored 
population, and that if the South wishes to keep its fields 
producing and its industry still expanding it will have to 
compete for the services of the colored man.”372 


To this, the most important part of the President’s 
remarks, while complimenting the tone and spirit 
of the whole, the same paper in which Carlyle Mc- 


s71Tbid, 
372Tbid. 


308 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Kinley in 1889 sought to reveal to the South its 
true policy, thus replied: 


“The South would be glad to see a considerable part of 
the negro population in this section find homes in other sec- 
tions.’’378 


The comment of that Northern publication which 
had, as has been shown, most intelligently discussed 
the migration of the Negroes from the South to the 
North and West in 1916, was to the effect that while 
the President’s scheme had much to recommend it 
as far as the spirit was concerned, yet— 


“The South knows as President Harding ought to know 
that you can’t draw a sharp line between politics and social 
life. The offices of a State are in most parts of America 
positions of social leadership. With complete political 
equality the State of Mississippi might easily elect a Negro 
as governor. Would such a result be accepted by Mississippi 
as devoid of social significance? The race problem unfor- 
tunately is not one that admits of easy general solutions.”’374 


The President’s speech appeared about the time 
at which Dr. DuBois returned from the second of the 
Pan-African congresses in Europe, which he had 
been mainly instrumental in convening and at which 
there were Negroes and mulattoes from West and 
South Africa, British Guiana, Grenada, Jamaica, 
Nigeria and the Gold Coast; Indians from India and 
East Africa; colored men from London; and twenty- 
five American Negroes. There were meetings at 
London, Brussels and Paris. 

The London congress over which presided a dis- 
tinguished English administrator, later Secretary 


s3News and Courier, Editorial, October 27, 1921. 
34The New Republic, November 9, 1921. 


309 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of State for India, Sir Sidney Olivier, was mild, the 
chairman making no attempt to control the find- 
ings. But at Brussels, where— 


“the black Senegalese, Blaise Diagne, French Deputy and 
High Commissioner of African troops—’’75 


presided— 
DuBois says— 


“We sensed the fear about us in a war land with nerves 
. still taut.’’376 


It seems Oswald Garrison Villard, with that re- 
freshing conceit which tempts him to discuss any 
subject whether he knows anything about it or not, 
had been ignorantly denouncing conscription, im- 
posed on French Negroes. 

With infinitely superior political acumen the Lon- 
don congress under the leadership of DuBois, or 
certainly with his approval, claimed the right to 
bear it equally with white Frenchmen, as long as 
France recognized racial equality; but when Du 
Bois at Brussels, after a few days of harmless 
palaver— 


“rose the last afternoon and read in French and English the 
resolutions of London—’’77 


there was some stir. This is the scene, as depicted 
by DuBois: 


“Diagne, the Senegales Frenchman who presided was be- 
side himself with excitement after the resolutions were read; 
as under secretary of the French government; as ranking 


Negro of greater France, and perhaps as a successful in- 
35DuBois, The New Republic, December 7, 1921. 
s76T hid, 
s77T bid. 


310 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


vestor in French Colonial enterprises he was undoubtedly 
in a difficult position. Possibly he was bound by actual 
promises to France and Belgium. His French was almost 
too swift for my ears, but his meaning was clear; he felt 
that the cause of the black man had been compromised by 
black American radicals; he especially denounced our demand 
for ‘the restoration of the ancient common ownership of the 
land in Africa’ as rank communism.’’78 


Dr. DuBois does not explain wherein it was not; 
but contents himself with declaring that Diagne used 
his power as chairman and prevented a vote, the 
question being referred to the French congress. 
Later in conversation with DuBois, Diagne declared 
that he had “‘only sought to prevent the assassination 
of a race.” 

In his final analysis of the congress at Paris, Du- 
Bois says: 

“France recognizes Negro equality, not only in theory but 
in practice, she has for the most part enfranchised her 
civilized Negro citizens. But what she recognizes is the 
equal right of her citizens black and white to exploit by 
modern industrial methods her laboring classes black and 
white; and the crying danger to black France is that its 
educated and voting leaders will join in the industrial rob- 
bery of Africa, rather than lead its masses to education and 
culture.”379 


DuBois thought Diagne and Candace, while un- 
wavering defenders of racial opportunity, education 
for and the franchise for the civilized, ‘curiously 
timid” when the industrial problems of Africa 
“were” approached. Well so was the Negro, Martin 
R. Delany, candidate for lieutenant governor of 


s78Tbid. 
s*Tbid. 


311 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


South Carolina in 1874. He had had advantages for 
studying the African problems which Dr. DuBois 
had possibly not enjoyed to the same degree. De- 
lany in his younger days had been an African ex- 
plorer and, even if he had not penetrated very deeply 
into “The Dark Continent,” had seen the African 
Negro in his lair. He and his younger co-laborer 
for reform in South Carolina, William Hannibal 
Thomas, ex-Union soldier from Ohio, as has been 
narrated, supported the candidacy of Judge Green 
for governor of South Carolina, in 1874, against the 
brilliant white Carpet-Bagger Daniel H. Chamber- 
lain and his lieutenant, the even less reputable black 
Carpet-Bagger, R. B. Elliott. But while Thomas ac- 
cepted Chamberlain, in 1876, as a changed man, with 
regard to Chamberlain’s accompaniment, Delany, 
who had been in South Carolina since 1865, eleven 
years to Thomas’s three, was still “curiously timid.” 

DuBois later enlarged his experience by a trip to 
Africa and, before that, possibly may have been 
moved by the work of a French Negro scholar who 
had made some mark in the literary world and oc- 
casioned some stir in French colonial politics, just 
after the Pan-African congress. But upon his 
return from these in 1921 DuBois at once addressed 
himself to the consideration of President Harding’s 
Birmingham speech. 

With a curious sympathy for the man, Harding, 
and a display of rank ingratitude to that white 
leader who had dared to do more for the Negro, 
than Harding thought became a white man, DuBois 
declared: 


312 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“The President made a braver, clearer utterance than 
Theodore Roosevelt ever dared to make or than William H. 
Taft or William McKinley ever dreamed of.... 


Mr. Harding meant that the American Negro must ac- 
knowledge that it was wrong and a disgrace for Booker T. 
Washington to dine with President Roosevelt.’’380 


Although thus praising the President and with a 
wholly gratuitous sneer at the dead Roosevelt who 
had dared the ‘disgrace’? and suffered for it, the 
Doctor asserted Harding’s “braver clearer utter- 
ance” was “‘an inconceivably dangerous and undem- 
ocratic demand,” which he disposes of with one 
sweep of his pen, which not only wiped out Hard- 
ing’s speech; but also brushed away the basis upon 
which John Stuart Mill erected his political economy, 
to wit—“‘‘the first impulse of mankind is to follow 
and obey, servitude rather than freedom is their 
natural state.” 


Not so in the view of Dr. DuBois: 


“No system of social up-lift which begins by denying the 
manhood of a man can end by giving him a free ballot, 
a real education and a just wage.’’381 


In reply to this it may be said, that when the Ne- 
groes are thoroughly diffused throughout the United 
States, they are apt to get as free a ballot as the 
whites and proportionately the same education; but 
when all who labor, white or black, get a just wage, 
the millenium will have arrived and the capitalistic 
lion will be lying down with the horny headed labor- 
ing lamb. 


380The Crisis, December, 1921, p. 53. 
81Tbid. p. 55 


313 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


It cannot be denied, however, that Dr. DuBois 
stirred up some comment with his congresses and 
those who believe in the exhortation—“let there be 
light” will be interested in the French and German 
utterances thereon. 

The Paris Temps, generally considered the organ 
of the French government, editorializes in these 
words: 

“Tt is the claims of the wiser group which must be studied. 

The road will be long for Negroes in the League 
of Nations toward the liberation modest though it is, whose 
program they have elaborated in their Congress. But there 
is nothing to keep us French from putting into immediate 
practice some articles at least of this program to start 
with.”382 

This is a world wide echo of Hayne’s Speech on 
the floor of the United States Senate just about a 
century earlier. It is also to some extent an en- 
dorsement of Diagne, whom DuBois had criticised 
as “curiously timid.” The portrait of the remark- 
able Senegalese who played such an Ajax to Du- 
Bois’s ambitious Hector does not appear; but an 
entire front page of The Crisis is given to Maran, 
the Black Thersites of the race. 

If DuBois would accept Diagne as the leader of 
the Negro people some results might come; but 
the Negro in DuBois will scarcely permit this. He 
might accept the far less able white, Oswald Gar- 
rison Villard. But no Negro. 

The German comment on the congress is less 
cautious than the French but points in the same 
direction : 
wba, pes. 


314 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


“The Congress was called by Dr. Burghardt DuBois, an 
American mulatto who has been prominent in his native 
country for many years as a race agitator. Its purpose 
was to draw together all Negro organizations throughout the 
world. The agenda included: the segregation of the colored 
races; the race problem in England, America and South 
Africa; and a future programme.... 

The attendance at London and Brussels was very small, 
but some four hundred delegates from every portion of the 
world participated in the proceedings at Paris. ... At the 
London session the radical ideas of DuBois, which approached 
those of Garvey were in the ascendant and force was preached 
as a possible alternative to attain the ends which the Ne- 
groes have in view. ... At Brussels, Deputy Diagne, a 
member of the French Parliament from Senegal, presided. 
When he saw that radical ideas were likely to prevail there 
also, he arbitrarily terminated the session. At Paris the 
programme was cut and dried. ... The newspapers gave 
full and sympathetic reports of the sessions. France by 
this stroke of diplomacy attained her purpose. Under the 
skilful leadership of the French deputy Diagne, the Con- 
gress adopted a more moderate programme of evolution in- 
stead of revolution, culminating in a platform demanding 
equality of all civilized men without distinction of race; a 
systematic plan for educating the colored races; liberty 
for the natives to retain their own religion and manners; 
restoration of native titles to their former lands and to its 
produce; the establishment of an international institute to 
study and record the development of the black race; the 
protection of the black race by the League of Nations; and 
the creation of a separate section in the International Labor 
Bureau to deal with Negro labor.’’?83 


In this report it is claimed both the United States 
and England are handled harshly, while France is 
praised. It seems Sir Harry Johnston is, to some 
| Amis, ‘The Living Age, February 4, 1922, p. 261. 

3815 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


degree, in accord with this praise of France, at the 
expense of his own country, his opinion being: 


“All in all, I am of the opinion that the French nation 
since 1871 has dealt with the Negro problem in Africa and 
in tropical America more wisely, prudently and successfully 
than we English have done.’’84 


It is this very fluent gifted linguist, in all prob- 
ability, who is responsible for the picturesque con- 
clusion: 


“Finally it is perfectly certain that the race question is 
the rock upon which the British Empire will be wrecked or 
the corner stone upon which the greatest political structure 
in the history of the world will be erected.’’385 


But if from a representative of Imperial Germany, 
the only country which ever enacted as a part of its 
organic law the principle of Nullification, it sur- 
passes in grandiosity and positiveness of statement 
the dictum of Calhoun in 1837: 


“We have for the last 12 years been going through a great 
and dangerous juncture. The passage is almost made and, 
if no new cause of difficulty should intervene, it will be suc- 
cessfully made. I, at present, see none but the abolition 
question, which however, I fear is destined to shake the 
country to its centre. ... For the first time the bold ground 
has been taken that slaves have a right to petition Con- 
gress ... itself emancipation.... Our fate as a people 
is bound up in the question. If we yield, we will be ex- 
tirpated; but if we successfully resist, we will be the great- 
est and most flourishing people of modern time. It is the 
best substratum of population in the world and one on which 
great and flourishing Commonwealths may be most easily 


and safely reared.’’8é 
S4Ibid. p. 262. 
85] bid. 
%¢Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 368. 


316 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


We of the South know, we did not successfully 
resist emancipation; were not extirpated; but do 
form part of “the greatest and most flourishing 
people of modern time.” We must realize that, no 
matter what was the price paid for it, emancipation 
was salvation for the South. It was a deliverance 
from the “body of death.” Reviewing our history, 
we find that in the same year that Calhoun, the 
greatest disruptive force in our politics, pronounced 
the dictum last quoted, a comparatively young and 
unknown politician, destined to be the greatest ce- 
menting force of the Union, declared— 


“That the institution of slavery is founded on both injus- 
tice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition 
doctrines tends rather to promote than to abate its evils.’’387 


In discussing this utterance of Lincoln, his latest 
biographer, Mr. Stephenson, who declares it re- 
veals the dawn of his intellect, beautifully pictures 
how— 


“arise the two ideas, the faith in a mighty governing power; 
the equal faith that it should use its might with infinite 
tenderness; that it should be slow to compel results.’88 


Going back ten years before the dawn of Lincoln’s 
intellect, and four prior to the declaration that the 
Negro question was, as he, Calhoun, saw it an 
African slave substratum on which great and flour- 
ishing commonwealths could be most easily and 
safely reared, Hayne, on the floor of the United 
States Senate, voiced in his own words, Lincoln’s 
subsequently sponsored thought. 


%7Stephenson, Lincoln, p. 32. 
S8Tbid. p. 35. 


317 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Harken to Hayne: 


“Thus, Sir, it appears that the Almighty in the wise order 
of his providence has marked out the course of events, which 
will not only remove all danger, but gradually and effec- 
tually and in his own good time accomplish our deliverance 
from what gentleman are pleased to consider as the curse 
of the land.’’389 

In 1827, it is apparent that the Negro question 
was a different question than it later became to the 
South; and that the strengthening and possible 
spread of slavery was in some measure due to Cal- 
houn’s devotion to it, over and above all other ques- 
tions, even before Nullification, is evidenced by his 
letter to Maxcy in 1830: 

“T consider the Tariff, but as the occasion rather than the 
real cause of the present unhappy state of things.”390_ 

Strange to state, even at that early date, he 
writes of the South possibly being compelled to 
“rebel,’’ to preserve her “peculiar institution.” 


Fortunately for the Lower South, Lincoln and not 
Seward was elected president in 1860; for had 
Seward been raised to that position of preeminence, 
in all human probability the seven States of South 
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, and Texas would have been allowed to se- 
cede and attempt the experiment of government in- 
volved therein, with a population of 2,619,116 whites, 
36,861 free persons of color, many of whom were 
slave owners, and 2,312,372 Negro slaves. 

That the colored population would have increased 
rapidly is a reasonable conclusion. Virginia, North 


89Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His > ed p. 207. 
0Bassett, Andrew Jackson, Vol. II 547. 


318 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, in all probabil- 
ity, would have speedily divested themselves of a 
great proportion of the 1,324,166 slaves they held 
and, even if such Southern statesmen as Leonidas 
Washington Spratt had not been able to reopen the 
African slave trade, the smuggling in of slaves on 
a greater and greater increasing scale would have 
been a consequence. Slavery being the corner stone 
of the new political structure, it would have been 
natural that the view of Governor Seabrook, that 
slave holding Negroes should be admitted to the 
ballot, would have eventually prevailed. War might 
have come between the large and small sections 
of North America from some frontier incident 
concerning Arkansas, the Indian Territory or 
Mexico; but it could scarcely have been the pulveriz- 
ing conflict which the Lower South sustained by the 
two and a half million additional whites of Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, maintained 
for four years of desperate struggle. 


Each year that the conflict was delayed would 
have found the States which remained in the old 
Union stronger and whiter, sickling the seceded 
States with railroads and quite possibly drawing 
Canada into their orbit; for as Sir Charles Dilke has 
pointed out in his Problems of Greater Britain, 
published when the annexation of Canada was still 
a debatable question— 


“a fact often overlooked in England is that hitherto the 
western centres of population of British North America 
have been more intimately connected with districts lying 


319 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


South of them across the American frontier than with 
places East and West of them, within the Canadian 
border.’’391 


The days of the “Little Englanders” were only 
then passing, when the colonies had almost been 
considered a nuisance. 

But whether the region mapped out now as Win- 
nipeg, Alberta and the other wheat areas of the 
Canadian West might have been attached to the 
great white Union in the sixties, if undisturbed by 
war and moving with continuingly accelerated in- 
dustrial development or not, the Union would have 
become whiter, as the Lower South darkened; and 
Calhoun’s “substratum” theory would have there 
been tested to the fullest extent and risk. 

From this Lincoln’s adroit political play induced 
the Lower South, by firing on the flag, to save itself, 
unknowingly. By the invasion of Virginia he forced 
that State, as well as North Carolina and Ten- 
nessee, into the Confederacy, against which, in 1862, 
he drew the weapon of emancipation without the 
least idea as to how deep it must cut. For it has 
proven to be a two edged sword. 

Nothing more clearly reveals Lincoln’s ignorance 
of the inevitable consequences of emancipation, than 
his message to Congress in December, 1862: 


“But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth 
and cover the whole land. Are they not already in the land? 
Will liberation make them more numerous? Equally dis- 
tributed among the whites of the whole country and there 
would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one 
" Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain, p. 20. 


320 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


in any way disturb the seven? ... But why should eman- 
cipation South send the free people North? People of any 
color seldom run unless there be something to run from. 
Heretofore to some extent they have fled North from bond- 
age and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and de- 
portation be adopted they will have neither to flee from. ... 
And in any event cannot the North decide for itself whether 
to receive them?’’392 


If this was the Great Emancipator’s view of 
emancipation, what wonder that the ‘Southern color 
psychosis” should spread like measles, from con- 
tact alone. 


The Congressional Reconstructionists thought 
that they had won in the war between the States 
what has since been styled euphoniously, ‘“‘a sphere 
of influence,” a subject people to sell goods to. But 
the mass of Northern and Western whites, true 
Americans, sickened of the excesses of Congres- 
sional Reconstruction. The Federal troops were 
withdrawn on the order of a true patriot, Ruther- 
ford B. Hayes, President of the United States, and 
not of a section. 


Chastened and disciplined by their fall from 
power, the most energetic and industrious, the bold- 
est and most assertive Negroes have, since 1876, 
been steadily moving into the mammoth cities of 
the North and West, to there build up in the segre- 
gated districts, groups of New Negroes, as the Re- 
port of the Chicago riot shows “more perfect thro 
suffering.” 


*®2Munford, Virginia’s Attitude, Slavery and Secession, p. 173. 


321 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


By a joint committee of blacks and whites that 
riot has been discussed and that makes the discus- 
sion the more valuable. 

In that great city of two and a half million of in- 
habitants, after ten days of riot, bloodshed, arson 
and murder, in response to the appeal of repre- 
sentative citizens, Governor Lowden appointed an 
emergency committee to study the underlying causes 
of the riot of 1919 and to make recommendations. 
According to the Census of 1920 there were then in 
Chicago 109,458 Negroes. The chairman of the 
committee was Edgar A. Bancroft, a leading law- 
yer, subsequently appointed by President Coolidge 
Ambassador to Japan. The vice chairman was 
Dr. Francis W. Sheppardson, at one time of the 
University of Chicago. The most prominent Ne- 
gro on the Committee was Robert S. Abbott, pro- 
prietor of the greatest and most influential Negro 
paper in the United States, The Chicago Defender. 
The report was published in 1922. It indicates 38 
persons killed in the riot, 15 whites and 23 Negroes. 
Of the 527 injured, 178 were white, 342 Negroes, 
the race denomination of 17 not being established. 

For the 38 deaths, there were nine presentments 
for murder returned, four persons being convicted. 

While it is stated that the merciless bombing of 
Negro households was due to a systematic campaign 
conducted by the press against Negroes buying prop- 
erties to one side of the district in which 90 per cent 
of the Negro population reside, that they moved, 
(on account of their increase), towards the side to 


322 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


which they did go, rather than in the opposite direc- 
tion, the report says— 


“may be explained partly by the hostility which the Irish 
and Polish groups had often shown to Negroes.’’93 


That Negroes were killed deliberately, as a busi- 
ness measure, in response to propaganda against 
them simply as Negroes, is an unavoidable conclu- 
sion. Extracts from “The Property Owners Jour- 
nal” show that again and again there was an at- 
tempt to appeal to a “Higher Law” than the law 
of the land. It seems to have been the law of greed. 
Here is an extract: 


“Any property owner who sells property anywhere in our 
district to undesirables is an enemy to the white owner and 
should be discovered and punished. ... The Negro is using 
the Constitution and its legal rights to abuse the moral rights 
of the white.’’%4 


Following this hypocritical appeal, 58 houses, 
bought by Negroes, were bombed, the residence of 
Jesse Binga, a Negro banker having been bombed 
six times without breaking down his firm determina- 
tion to stand the storm. The house of a Negro 
woman was bombed three times. Her home had 
been attacked in the riots and the front door battered 
down; but, upon calling on the police, she and her 
husband were by them arrested, altho’ later ac- 
quitted. The report charges gross and continuous 
exaggeration during the riot, in which it is dis- 
tinctly stated that the Chicago Tribune led, although 
it is also stated, that the paper owned by one of the 


%3Negro in Chicago, p. 8. 
STbid. p. 121. 


323 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


committee, in one instance, could hardly have been 
surpassed. That this last statement should have 
been made, speaks volumes for the fairness of the 
committee and the member of the committee thus 
concurring with the stricture on himself. It also 
states, of the paper published by Robert S. Abbott, 
“The Defender”: 


“It is probably no exaggeration to say that the Defender’s 
policy prompted thousands of restless Negroes to venture 
North, where there were assured of its protection and 
championship of their cause.’’9 


The Governor in his FOREWORD states that the 
report shows “that the presence of Negroes in large 
numbers in our great cities is not a menace in it- 
self.” Incidents cited showed high courage and 
efficiency on the part of Negro policeman and the 
exhibition of a stern sense of duty controlling race 
prejudice. 


The report says: 


“It is clear that migrant Negroes are not returning South. 
On the contrary there is a small but continuous stream of 
migration to the industrial centres of the North. No great 
numbers of Negroes returned to the South even during the 
trying unemployment period in the early part of 1921.7396 


Sustaining the country’s stand against the un- 
restricted immigration of the ante bellum period, 
just about this time, the New Republic asserted: 


“If we can hold the gates closed for another decade, these 
abuses are bound to go. Not everybody in America would 
like this. Nor would everybody in America be pleased with 


Ibid. p. 92. 
*6Tbid. p. 105. 


324 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


another natural consequence of restriction, that it will draw 
more and more Negroes out of the rural South, especially 
the lynching belt for common labor in the industries.’’97 


In his FOREWORD to the Chicago report, Gov- 
ernor Lowden places himself in absolute opposition 
to Lincoln. He says: 


“Our race problem must be solved in harmony with the 
fundamental law of the nation and with its free institutions. 
These prevent any deportation of the Negro as well as any 
restriction of his freedom of movement within the United 
States.’’398 


But the report of the Chicago riot contains much 
more than an expression of the views of the com- 
mittee as to the cause of that outburst of savagery. 
In its 667 pages are the views of many Negroes on 
the greatest variety of subjects. The first article 
of the belief of the members of the Negro Urban 
League of Chicago is— 


“T realize that our soldiers have learned new habits of self- 
respect and cleanliness.’”399 


That is a short sentence, but it contains much. 


Here is another which indicates that the Negro 
will not only learn much from the Northern and 
Western white man; but also teach him a bit. It 
is not very sweetly expressed, but it is well worth 
pondering for all that: 


“There is one trait, and I might say only one, that I 
take off my hat to the southern ‘Cracker’ for, and that is 
his respect and high regard for women. While he hasn’t 


much for the other fellow’s (the Negro’s) wives and daugh- 
2’The New Republic, February 14, 1923. 
®8Negro in Chicago, p. XXIII. 
“Ibid. p. 1938. 


325 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


ters, yet he respects his own. We must set a good example 
for him and respect all women, regardless of race, color or 
creed. Then you will win the admiration of all civilized 
people. Men who do not respect and honor their women are 
not worthy of citizenship.’ 


Only one trait, but what an important one! 


OTbid. p. 306. 


326 


CHAPTER XVII 


Passing from the report of the Negro riot in 
Chicago, of 1919 to the Negro Year Book for the 
same date, we find therein the assertion, that the 
aggregate wealth of the 10,300,000 Negroes in the 
United States, at that date, was estimated at $1,100,- 
000,000. © 

Whatever the wealth or progress of the Negroes 
in the United States is asserted to be, at any time, 
it is customary to allude to it, as that much in ex- 
cess of nothing at the time of Emancipation. The 
Negro writers in particular are prone to claim this. 
This has been, in some degree, shown in this study 
to be incorrect; but it may be well to go a little 
further into the matter. 

In the year 1860 the 4,441,800 colored persons in 
the United States consisted of 488,070 free persons 
of color and 3,953,730 Negro and mulatto slaves. 
The 488,070 free persons of color were about evenly 
divided between the Northern and the Southern 
States. They possessed property. What was the 
probable value of their holdings? 

The Census of 1860 shows, that in the city of 
Charleston, South Carolina, there were 3,237 free 
persons of color and that 357 of them returned prop- 
erty for taxation, on which they paid $12,015.60 in 
taxes, mainly upon real estate, probably about seven- 
eighths of the whole. But they also paid taxes on 
income and business, as well as head taxes on the 
slaves they owned and upon their horses, carriages 
and dogs. With the generally accepted average 
value for slaves and a safe valuation for horse-flesh, 


327 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


as the value of the real estate is disclosed, we can cal- 
culate that the aggregate wealth of the free persons 
of color in Charleston, S. C., in 1860 must have been 
about $888,650. Unless there was some particular 
advantage, materially, in a residence, by free per- 
sons of color, in that State and city most identified 
with “the peculiar institution,” the per capita es- 
tablished can be extended to the whole population 
of this class in the United States, at that date; 
which would have accordingly amounted to about 
$1383,989,231. 


Of course there may have been greater wealth 
among the free persons of color in Charleston than 
in the rest of the State of South Carolina; but for | 
the same reason there would have been still greater 
wealth in New Orleans and the greater cities of the 
North, where real estate was necessarily of greater 
value with a greater growth. 


As the free persons of color had more than quad- 
rupled in the six decades ending in 1860, what 
reason is there to think that, inured to the respon- 
sibilities of freedom, their rate of increase, after 
the emancipation of the mass of slaves, should have 
materially lessened? 

With the Negro slaves emancipated in mass it 
would be different; and therefore it is not at all 
unlikely, that of the $1,100,000,000 owned in 1919 
by the entire Negro population of the United States, 
something like $535,957,124 should be credited to 
the descendants of the free persons of color, best 
equipped at the outset to reap their share of the 
wealth the War between the States brought to the 


328 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


North and West, rather than to the greater number 
of the emancipated remaining in the impoverished 
South and suffering with the whites the evils of 
Congressional Reconstruction. That it took the 
South until 1890 to regain in material wealth what 
they had lost between 1861 and 1876, while in the 
same period the advance in material gain in the 
North and West was the envy of the world, but 
clinches the argument. 

Selfishness is, however, not infrequently the ac- 
companiment of increasing prosperity and, there- 
fore, it should not surprise any thoughtful individual 
to note, that the cultured DuBois and not a few of 
his white acclaimers look somewhat askance at the 
steady movement of the Southern Negroes out of the 
South and into the North and West. 

This is not the attitude, however, of that Negro 
whose name heads the report of the committee on 
the Chicago riot. 

Robert 8S. Abbott comes nearer the Biblical de- 
scription of the owner of the vineyard. He wishes 
to share with the laborers of his race the fields he 
has garnered so successfully with his weekly paper, 
the “Chicago Defender” and therefore whatever may 
be his extravagances of expression, he seems to be 
the most unselfish leader the Negroes have. 

In thus turning to the weekly rather than at- 
tempting the more ambitious daily, the Negroes show 
a clear-sightedness to their credit. 

“Negro papers are published weekly because they cannot 


compete with the daily papers in providing any part of the 
public with news from day to day.’’401 


41Negro in Chicago, p. 567. 
329 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


This is a very simple statement, but it contains 
a great amount of wisdom. 

For that part of humanity which lacks wealth the 
weekly paper is a great protector. The news passes 
thro’ a filterer. It gives the honest editor and pub- 
lisher an opportunity to scrutinize that which the 
fierce competition for the daily item of news may 
hardly permit. 

The call for copy is not infrequently a call of dis- 
tress. To fill a void may bring about a hasty selec- 
tion of cartoon plate, by no means hastily prepared; 
but possibly for just such a contingency. These so 
selected, not seldom undo the effect of an editorial, 
while much masquerading as news, but in reality 
propaganda, may be hastily slapped into the forms 
around two o’clock in the morning. The Negroes, 
therefore, in clinging to weeklies ‘‘are wiser in their 
generation than the children of light.”’ 

Happily for humanity, sentimentality destroyed 
slavery of the Negroes in the United States; but the 
result was an intense stimulation of economic slavery 
of whites and blacks, by the simple process of let- 
ting in from Europe masses of whites, many of 
whom were below the standards of numbers of 
American Negroes. That having been checked, the 
Negro laborer in every line must now measure him- 
self against the Slav and the Latin. In physical 
power he is superior to the Latin; but the Latin 
makes up for it in greater pertinacity and orderli- 
ness of method. While the statement will probably 
be received with derision, the training of the slave 
by the Southern slave-holder and the working of the 


330 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


Negro by the Southerner is not at the driving pace 
at which the North and West move, and under that 
spur the Northern Negro becomes a more efficient 
tool. But North or South the mass has been helped 
more than hindered by that which a cultivated young 
Negro addressing one of the leading educational 
institutions of the United States thus described: 


“The savage and the child, to rise to higher things must 
feel the power of a stronger hand. This is the special 
blessing of the American Negro and has in forty years set 
him centuries ahead of his Haytien brother, who has been 
self governing for one hundred years.’’°2 


Even if he has since recanted, this was the view 
of William Pickens in 1903, when awarded the Ten 
Eyck Prize at Yale University. But if the Negro 
is affected by the presence of the white to the Negro’s 
betterment, it is only fair and just to quote a 
Southern opinion with regard to the reverse. 

Only two years later than the award to Pickens at 
Yale University, a Southern scholar published “The 
Coming Crisis’; which despite the fact that it is 
written in flawless English, exhibits a symmetry of 
composition which is altogether admirable, and 
advances views held to-day by a vast number, not a 
few of whom have achieved some reputation in the 
discussion of them less intelligently than Mr. Pinck- 
ney in 1905, his book, nevertheless, at that date, 
fell absolutely flat. What Mr. Pinckney discerned 
before the World War others can now also see. His 
view of the Negro problem was not in accord with 
the view of the author of this study. He would have 
~ 42Yale Lit, Magazine, p. 237. 

331 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


been surprised to hear that it could have been 
thought to be in accord with that of Abraham Lin- 
coln, to a great degree, altho’ with some differences. 
But in Pinckney’s discussion the Negro is merely in- 
cidental to the subject which is to him so inspiring 
as to be visualized in a passage worth pondering: 


“It seems probable that the history of the United States 
is calculated to furnish more complete and more striking 
illustration of the working of political principles than was 
ever furnished to the world before. It is an experiment on 
so grand a scale and interests so gigantic are at stake that 
enthusiasm itself is overwhelmed in the contemplation. It 
was too much to hope for, that such an experiment should be 
successful from the start. Not so lightly might the latest 
and greatest blessing to mankind, the gift of rational liberty, 
be wrested from reluctant nature. Not without thorns and 
blood and agony might such a crown be won. Were the 
reward to be more easily obtained, possibly those who won 
it would have proved unworthy to enjoy it. Let those re- 
member this that fear for the fate of the Republic. So will 
their hearts be filled afresh with courage. So from within 
will well up new healing streams of hope, balm of hurt 
minds, refreshing, comfortable. To fall from grace is to 
learn the pathway of salvation and, like the prodigal son, 
to become a partaker of joys before unknown.’’43 


Nowhere can be found a more delicate satire, than 
the chapter in his book which is entitled “Salary 
and Sentiment—Reason and Revenue.” There is 
also very clear and convincing reasoning. But it is 
in regard to what Mr. Pinckney has to say of the 
presence of the Negroes in the South that reference 
now is had. 


403Pinckney, The Coming Crisis, p. 61. 
832 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


In opposition to the view of Wade Hampton, M. 
C. Butler and Carlyle McKinley, according to Mr. 
Pinckney : 


“The States themselves must control the Negro question, 
or the American system is at an end. Effort on the part 
of the Federal Government to control or even to tamper 
with this matter must at all times result, as it has hitherto 
invariably resulted, in riot and anarchy. Thus, as far as 
the South is concerned, the very highest sanctions possible 
are by natural law attached to strict observance of the true 
constitutional construction. To travel the constitutional path 
is safety and happiness; to wander from it is instant anarchy. 
. .. The purpose is to protect all local affairs against in- 
trusion from without, but among those affairs first and 
foremost has always stood the Negro Question, in which 
there can be no hesitation, choice or possibility of alterna- 
tive. Thus the smaller matter of the presence of the Negro 
is included in the larger class of matters which comprise the 
whole range of local interests. ... The Negro is thus the 
(wholly unconscious) means of illustrating the necessity for 
constitutional self government. His presence effectually pre- 
vents the South from departing for an instant from the 
Constitutional pathway. Cuffy must be remembered if the 
Republic is to be saved.’ 


This is in agreement with the view, that the 
Southern States are Democratic, because the pres- 
ence of the Negro, now freed, forces them to be so. 


There may be truth in that; but it may be, that 
they are and have been Democratic in spite of the 
Negro. 

The publication of the List of Tax-Payers in 
Charleston, “The Hot-Bed of Secession’, in 1860 was 
an illustration of the thorough-going democracy of 
the place and the people, at that time. It was an 

44Tbid. p. 58. 

333 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


open display of the strength and weakness of each 
and every governmental burden bearer, and of the 
burdens imposed. What could be more democratic 
than that? There was a tax of 1.4 per cent on real 
estate; a tax of 1.4 per cent on stocks of goods. 
There was no tax on bonds and no tax on stock, 
because, without interest or dividends, the scrip is 
mere paper. But there was a tax on interest and 
dividends of 2.5 per cent; the same on gross income; 
commissions; annuities and gross receipts of all 
commerical agencies. On premiums of insurance 
there was a tax of 1.25 per cent. On capital in 
shipping, as it should have been, the tax was light, 
only .75 per cent; for shipping is the very life of a 
seaport. But it was also gainful, so it was taxed for 
some of its gain. The foolish idea of absolute ex- 
emption was avoided. Luxuries were taxed fairly, 
in the additional head taxes. The carriage drawn 
by two horses was taxed a third more tiian the car- 
riage drawn by one. Sulkeys were taxed lower 
than one horse carriages and horses and mules lower 
still. Slaves were taxed, but the head tax of $3 per 
slave, when it is realized that some sold for $1200 
apiece was indefensibly light compared to the tax 
on horse-flesh and property of that kind. One per 
cent on a Negro to ten per cent on a mule by the 
average value and lessening with the increase of 
value of either was an immense incentive to slave- 
holding. With apparently this one exception, in the 
absence of that procrustean bed, the uniform rate, 
upon which all property which cannot be concealed 
is now stretched, the wealthy paid according to their 


334 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


wealth, the poor according to their poverty; but all, 
who had anything, contributed to the general wel- 
fare, and bore a fair share of the general burden. 

That is the real reason why they fought so long 
and well. For instance on $385,000 of real estate, 
28 slaves, 1 carriage and 2 horses, Otis Mills and 
Otis Mills & Co. paid a tax of $5,524. On $281,000 
of real estate, 14 slaves, a carriage and 2 horses, 
William Aiken paid a tax of $4,027.40. On $101,500 
of real estate, $2,724.16, interest on bonds, 3 slaves 
and $45,000 of shipping, the estate of James Adger 
paid a tax of $1,835.60. On $15,000 of real estate, 
$1,982 interest on bonds, $14,642 commissions, 14 
slaves, 1 carriage, 3 horses and 2 dogs, Wm. C. Bee 
and Wm. C. Bee & Co. paid a tax of $732.60. On 
a stock of goods $16,000, commissions $9,000, Jef- 
fords & Co. paid a tax of $449. On $8,000 ship- 
ping, $4,600 income and 38 slaves E. Lafitte & Co. 
paid a tax of $184. On a stock of goods of $1,000, 
Samuel P. Lawrence paid a tax of $14. On 1 slave 
Mrs. M. 8S. H. Godber paid a tax of $3. On $200 
of real estate Dr. Charles M. Hitchcock paid a tax 
of $1.80. Ona stock of goods valued at $100, C. H. 
Brunson paid a tax of $1.40. The tax imposed on 
the manufacture of gas light was lighter than that 
imposed on shipping; but it was gainful and on a 
capital of $755,700 the Company paid a tax $3,- 
7178.50.45 

That the condition of the Southern States was in- 
calculably improved by the abolition of slavery is 
the firm belief of the author of this study. But 
WeGtaivats & Cogawell List of Taxpayers Charleston, S. C. 1860. 

835 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


that from the tax legislation that followed, the 
morals of all have suffered tremendously, is the be- 
lief of many, with which he agrees. 

The presence of the Negroes in the masses in 
which they still remained in the South after eman- 
cipation retarded even the remarkable recovery that 
the South has made. In this year of 1925, the 
first in a century in which the white population of 
South Carolina has exceeded in numbers the colored, 
it is apparent that the small industries of country 
life are becoming distinctly more gainful. Why? 
With lessening mass the Negro is feeling the effect 
of environment. He is less of a pilferer. And with 
less friction and consequent material gain, wider 
opens the door to literature and art. 

That there is an immense educational power in 
art has again and again been demonstrated by ar- 
tists who have had a purpose deeper than—“Art for 
art’s sake.” 

As an illustration, one cannot fail to note that 
while the educated Negroes of the North could not 
possibly take at the hands of a Negro Union soldier, 
who had fought for the freedom of the race and. 
gone thro’ the days of Congressional Reconstruction 
without a stain, as a distinct Legislative leader, a 
faithful description of the great mass of Negroes in 
the South, they acclaimed the French Negro author 
of “Batouala,’”’ whose realistic novel of the Negro in 
Africa while criticising severely their white French 
rulers, damns the Negroes, even more so. The book 
is not only interesting, it is instructive to those who 
need the instruction; and the increasing numbers of 


336 


THE SLAVE: TRADE 


educated Negroes at the North needed just such a 
book, in order to show them what they were rescued 
from in Africa. | 


Rene Maran says: 


“My book is not a polemic. It comes by chance when its 
hour strikes. The Negro Question is of the present. Who 
made it that? Why the Americans.” 


Describing French Colonial Africa, he quotes, the 
Senegalese, Diagne: 


“the best settlers have been not the professional colonials, 
but the European troops from the trenches.” 


This is in the preface. 


The book opens with the awakening of the hero 
“Batouala”’ in the hut in which he sleeps with his 
eighth and favorite wife, Yassiguindjia. It recalls 
another awakening in another realistic piece of lit- 
erature, “Old Bram” in ‘‘The Black Border.” The 
only difference is between the awakening of a wolf 
and the awakening of an old watch dog, “the friend 
of man,” a tamed wolf. The story revolves around 
the politics and desires of Batouala, Bissibingui and 
Yassiguindjia. Batouala is a wolf who cares for the 
pack; Bissibingui, a young wolf, as fierce, who cares 
but for himself and his desires. Yassiguindjia can 
only be described by one of the items with which she 
was purchased. 

In “The Black Border” it is true we are in South 
Carolina, along the coast; but, as has been eloquently 
stated by a Scotch South Carolinian, in that region 
“there is Africa in every breath we draw.” With 
Mtehene Maran, Batouala, pp. 10, 12. 


337 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


artistic power Maran pictures the sounds of the 
African dawn. 


“Daylight broke. Although heavy with sleep still, Batou- 
ala—Batouala, the Mokoundji, chief of so many villages— 
Was quite conscious of these sounds. He yawned, shivered and 
stretched himself. Should he go to sleep again? Should he 
get up? God! Why getup? He did not even wish to know 
WY: ces ve 

“Now merely to get up—didn’t that require an enormous 
effort? In itself a perfectly simple decision, so it seemed. 
As a matter of fact it was hard; for getting up and work- 
ing were one and the same thing, at least to the whites... . 
Life is short. Work is for those who will never understand 
life. Doing nothing does not degrade a man. In the eyes 
of one who sees things truly, it differs from laziness. As for 
him, Batouala, until it was proved to the contrary, he would 
believe that to do nothing was simply to profit by everything 
that surrounds us. To live from day to day without thought 
of yesterday or care for the morrow, without looking ahead 
—that was perfect.’’4°7 


What a perfect picture of the Negro without “the 
power of a stronger hand,” which William Pickens 
saw so clearly the need of in 1903. And the philos- 
ophy of it! Moved to visit Africa in 1924, Dr. 
DuBois makes a discovery: 

“IT began to notice it as I entered Southern France. I 
formulated it in Portugal. I knew it as a great truth one 
Sunday in Liberia. And the great truth was this: Efficiency 
and happiness do not go together in modern culture..... 


And laziness; divine, eternal langour is right and good 
and true.’’408 


The Doctor praises the ‘‘manners’” of the Africans. 
“Their manners were better than those of Park Lane or 
Park Avenue, Rittenhouse Square or the North Shore.... 


“i Thid; ‘pp, 922, a4. 
“The Nation, December 17, 1924, p. 675. 


338 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


The primitive black man is courteous and dignified.... 
Wherefore shall we all take to the Big Bush? No I prefer 
New York.’’409 


As to the great truth, happiness depends upon what 
is in the soul of the man, not upon his surroundings. 

But Batouala while he disliked work could exert 
himself to hunt or fight. His grievance was that 
which has moved men more than any other thro’ all 
the ages. He and his people were too heavily taxed. 
He gathered the people together and harangued 
them. 


“A drunken crowd pressed up behind the group of which 
Batouala was the centre. They reviled the whites. Batou- 
ala was right, a thousand times right. Of old before the 
coming of the whites, they had lived happily. They had 
worked a little for themselves, they had eaten and drunk and 
slept. From time to time they had had bloody palavers and 
had plucked the livers from the dead to eat their courage 
and incorporate it in themselves. Such had been the happy 
days of old, before the coming of the whites.”41° 


Then follows a description of the great dance. 


“Bissibingui was the handsomest of all. The strongest 
too. His muscles stood out. His eyes glowed like the brush 
on fire. ... What had gone before was nothing. All the 
preceding noises and outcries, the confused dancing had only 
been a preparation for what was to come—the dance of 
love, scarcely ever danced but on this evening, when they 
were permitted to indulge in debauchery and crime..... 
Couples formed. . . It was the immense joy of brutes loosed 
from all control. .. A couple dancing fell to the ground. 

Suddenly his fingers twitching about a knife in his hand, 
Batouala, the mokoundji rushed upon this couple. He was 
foaming. His fist was raised for the blow. More nimble 


40Tbid. 
“0Rene Maran, Batouala, p. 90. 


339 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


than monkeys, Bissibingui and Yassiguindjia leapt out of 
his reach. He pursued them. Ah, these children of a dog 
had the impudence to desire each other before his very eyes. 
He’d have the skin of that strumpet. As for Bissibingui 
... Ah wouldn’t the women make fun of him then. Yassi- 
guindjia! The idea! Hadn’t he bought her with seven 
waist cloths, a box of salt, three copper collars, a bitch, four 
pots, six hens, twenty she goats, forty big baskets of millet, 
and a girl slave! Ah, he’d make Yassiguindjia take the 
test poison.’’411 


But the arrival of the commandant saves the 
guilty couple. Batouala, however, still plots the life 
of Bissibingui, who is plotting the robbery of his 
own people, as one of the commandant’s soldiery. 
In the great hunt Batouala hurls a javelin at his 
rival, misses him and is himself struck down by an 
infuriated passing panther. So the dark patriot 
falls and the black scalawag wins. It is an impres- 
sive picture of African life, the men, the women and 
the conjugality. 

Turn we now to the coast of South Carolina, where 
in “The Black Border,” the scene is laid, for ‘“‘Jim 
Moultrie’s Divorce,” the deepest in discernment of 
all the life like sketches of that moving book. 

Jim, too, was a great hunter, an unwearied pur- 
suer. No animal. Buta black man. A believer in 
divorce, as almost all Negroes in America are, even 
in South Carolina, where the law refuses it. 

At the end of a cold blustering day in February, 
after pushing his clumsy dug-out canoe into every 
creek and lead of the Jehossee marshes, to flush 
ducks for the white sportsman who had hired him, 
VanTnaena OR LOS 05 e106 ar O7. 

840 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


at sun set he is turning home. How the picture ap- 
peals to us of the coast. 


“Far up the river, like low hung stars, twinkled the watch 
fires of a great timber raft outward bound for the estuary 
of the North Edisto. From a distant plantation came the 
sweet lu-la-lu of a happy Negro freed from work. The 
raft borne upon the bosom of the strong ebb tide, neared 
rapidly, and around its fires, built on earth covered platforms, 
the negro raftsmen talked and laughed as they cooked their 
supper and the flames lighted the face and magnified the 
figure of the black steersman who stood by the great sweep 
oar, with which at the stern of the raft, he guided its course 
down stream. 

For an hour Jim had silently bucked the tide, impelling the 
boat under the powerful strokes of his paddle, alternately 
left and right. 

‘What are you thinking of Jim?’ 

‘Study ’bout ’ooman, suh.’ (A short silence). 

‘Ooman shishuh cuntrady t’ing, dem nebbuh know w’en 
dem well off. You kin feed dem, you kin pit clo’es puntop 
dem back, you kin pit shoo ’puntop dem feet, you kin pit 
hat ’puntop dem head, you kin pit money een dem han’, en’ 
still yet oonah nebbuh know de ’ooman, nebbuh know w’en 
dem min’ gwine sattify. Dem fuhrebbuh duh lookout fuh 
trubble. Ef dem ent meet trubble duh paat’, dem gwine hunt 
fuhr’um duh ’ood. I dunkyuh how soeb’uh fudduh de trub- 
ble dey, dem gwine fin ’um. Ef dem cyan’ see ’e track fuh 
trail ’um, dem gwine pit dem nose een de du’t en’ try fuh 
smell ’um, but dem gwine fin’um. I duh study ’pun dat 
wife I nyuse fuh hab, name Mary. Look how him done, 
w’en him hab no cajun! You yeddy ’bout me trubble, enty 
suh? Lemme tell you. One Sat’d’y night I gone home frum 
de ribbuh. I tek two duck’, bakin, flour en’ sugar en’ tea, 
den I pit fibe dolluh’ een Mary’ lap. Enty you know, suh, 
dat is big money fuh t’row een nigguh’ lap? W’en I bin- 
nuh boy en’ you t’row uh ’ooman fifty cent, ’e t’ink ’ e rich, 
but I bin all dat week wid one cump’ny uh dese yuh rich 
Nyankee buckruh’ dat Mr. FitzSimmon hab yuh fuh shoot, 


341 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


en’ dem buckruh’ t’row me fibe dolluh bill same lukkuh dem 
bin dime’! W’en I t’row de money in de ’ooman’ lap, en pit de 
todduh t’ing wuh I fetch ’pun de flo’, Mary nebbuh crack ’e 
teet’. I ax ’um ’smattuh mek ’um stan ’so? ’E mek ansuh, 
’nutt’n’. Nex’ day de ’ooman keep on same fashi’n. ’E 
nebbuh crack ’e bre’t. I quizzit ’um ’gen. I ax ’um ’smat- 
tuh ’long ’um. Him say, ‘nutt’n’. Den I say ‘berry well den.’ 
Monday mawnin’ I tek me gun, I call me dog en’ den I talk 
to de ’ooman. I say, ‘Mary, I gwine duh ribbuh, en’ I gwine 
come back Sat’d’y two week’. I dunnoh ’smattuh mek you 
stan’so, but I know suh de debble dey een you. No ’ooman 
*puntop dis ribbuh hab mo’ den you, no ’ooman get so much, 
but I yent able fuh lib dis way ’long no ’ooman wuh ti ’up 
’e mout’, en w’en I cum back las’ Sat’d’y two week’ I gwine’ 
tarry gate you one mo’ time, en’ I gwine ax you ’smattuh 
mek you stan’ so, en if oonah still een de same min ’ez now, 
den me nuh you paa’t.’’412 


The obstinate silence of the woman is related and 
the parting in silence. Then follows the attempt of 
the woman to appease him, her jealousy gone. His 
refusal. His resentment that she should have be- 
lieved an idle lie. His determination that it was 
too late. And then the last two lines, which hold 
so much. 


“Have you another wife Jim?” 

“I had dat gal you see wid me dis mawnin’ een Mr. Fitz- 
Simmun’ yaa’d. Him ent wut’!’’413 

Jim Moultrie’s conceptions as to conjugality might 
be improved upon; but they are certainly cycles 
ahead of Batouala’s. It is in the sketches this book 
contains and in the altogether admirable ‘Duel in 
Cummings” that we find the Southern coast country 
Negro as he is, most observant, not lacking in a 


4122Gonzales, The Black Border, pp. 212, 213, 214. 
Did wep eiedoe 


342 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


homely philosophy, and, as Thomas, the Ohio Negro, 
noted (altho’ utterly lacking it himself) a creature 
of infinite humor. Whence does he derive it? He 
seems to lose it to some extent as he moves out of 
the coast region. But he becomes more efficient. 
He has benefited immensely by his sojourn in 
America. He ought to take more interest in his 
race elsewhere than the cultivated members seem 
to. It is good for the Negroes of the United States 
that numbers should continue to move into the 
Northern and Western States. It is providing a 
most interesting experiment. The urban Negro 
dwellers of the great cities of the North and West 
are furnishing a most interesting illustration of 
that mysterious power which leads humanity to its 
betterment. By the Census of 1920, in the great 
city of New York there were 152,467 Negroes. By 
the estimates of the Department of Commerce for 
July, 1923, this had been increased to 183,248.14 
Unless the migratory movement has slowed down 
as that estimate is for July 1, 1923, the Negro popu- 
lation of New York, today must be 194,445, with 
that of Philadelphia at 163,248 and Chicago at 148,- 
326. There is no urban Negro population of these 
figures anywhere in the Southern States. _The 
nearest would be New Orleans where the Negro pop- 
ulation may be 107,530. But in addition in the 
great cities which stretch along and thro’ the rich 
and populous territory between New York and Chi- 
cago up to the borders of Canada the Negro popula- 
tion is steadily increasing. Detroit at the very door 
meat enartniant of Commerce, Estimates of population, p. 138. 


343 


THE SLAVE TRADE 


of Canada holds a Negro population greater than 
that of any Southern city except New Orleans; for 
Baltimore is practically a Northern city now. 


While the urban Negro population of the South- 
ern States appears to be increasing it is scarcely 
increasing at the rate at which it is increasing in the 
great section of the North above described and as 
has been shown in not a few States of the South the 
Negro population as a whole is decreasing slightly; 
while the white population is increasing actively. 
But the civilization of the Southern whites has been 
handicapped by the weight of the Negro population 
which it has carried for a century and more. It 
should not bear any more than its fair proportion 
of that load and in the natural movement of the 
Negroes from the South up to the north central 
portion of the Union and to some extent into Canada, 
by the amalgamation of Negroes and mulattoes, a 
brown people affected by the civilization of these sec- 
tions, differing in some degrees from the darker Ne- 
groes who will more slowly develop in the Southern 
States, will show in their progress what the North 
and West can do to improve them. With ever lessen- 
ing numbers in the South, they will the better re- 
spond to their environment, which will be the better 
for such lessening. The result will be the advance 
of all to a better condition and a higher plane of 
thought. 


344 


ke cea Ad 


= 



























PACU) aki in: 


ih 


ee 


oe 
a5 
Pe’ 


“S 
a 


a 
i 


. 










































































| 





————— co = 
Tes: N — 
= 10 | 
— S 
ee Le 
———— oO 
ae x 
Soar See) 
———— © 
N 
7 
en 
© 
Lee) 


LINNEA A 


7 





